With all the talk about electric cars and hybrids these days, why hasn't anyone talked about just improving gasoline...

With all the talk about electric cars and hybrids these days, why hasn't anyone talked about just improving gasoline? The big draw of electric cars is that they produce no emissions themselves, right? Couldn't someone develop a gasoline that burns perfectly to produce no emissions? So the engine would have a perfect burn mix in the cylinder and nothing would come out of the exhaust manifold - the gasoline burns perfectly and there's no exhaust generated.

...

I'm trying hard to restrain myself here.

...a perfect combustion reaction produces emissions. It is just a byproduct of the chemical reaction - not the product of an imperfect process.

I'm trying hard to restrain myself here.

...a perfect combustion reaction produces emissions. It is just a byproduct of the chemical reaction not the product of an imperfect process.

okay, but why can't they make a chemical reaction that doesn't produce anything in the right-hand side of that equation?

>why hasn't anyone talked about just improving gasoline?
This is literaly what the automotive industry has been doing for the past two decades. We thought EVs and hybrids were definitely gonna kill ICE two decades ago but then the automakers started pulling a lot of ICE improvements out of their ass when we thought that gasoline engine technology was already stagnant and maxed out.

because that's not how chemistry works.

It has to be a different fuel

Is it because we're not willing to break the rules, or is it because people just can't think of a way to bypass them?

No it's combustion. So it combines with oxygen to burn. You can't have something combine with oxygen and end up with nothing. That's not conservation of anything really. Look up vapor carburetor s and fuel injectors if you want a big oil company to murder you in your sleep