thor's hammer or dilithium

A Connecticut research and development consortium is building on the ideas of a concept car teased out a few years ago to reinvent the internal combustion engine and bring it to the automotive market.
The principles remain the same, only the atomizer is different—instead of spritzing diesel, carefully calibrated lasers are focused on miniscule particles of the dense metal thorium to produce heat to, latent but with amazing potential. Once common in street lamps and the brilliant glow of gas lights, the element fell out of favour due to (mostly) exaggerated concerns over radioactivity and with burgeoning interest as an alternative to uranium for nuclear reactors, one gram of the substance, finely chopped, could potentially yield the equivalent output of some thirty-thousand litres of traditional petroleum fuels. Motors designed to harness this energy have been already shrunk to a size that would fit under the bonnet of most cars. Though fairly abundant and easily harvested, there is still a finite amount of Thorium available, but could prove a cleaner and more efficient source of energy—especially when prospectors begin to mine asteroids and comets.