I normally have a great deal of respect for the Young Turks, but I'm deeply disappointed that they lent any credence to the Thorium Car non-sense. How on earth do you make a heavy metal shoot out a laser beam? Sounds like a charalatan getting ready to bilk non-scientifically literate investors. Searching on "maxfelaser", I found this page:

http://maxfelaser.blogspot.com/search/label/the%20maxfelaser%20power%20generation%20systems

I'm not the only skeptic:
http://granades.com/2011/09/16/in-which-i-use-scientific-reasoning-to-doubt-the-thorium-powered-car/

I'll admit that I've long had a prejudice against Thorium. The second I hear that word, I'm ready to call BS. I've not been proven wrong yet. Anyone tries to tell you that Thorium reactors are a safer alternative, just ask them to lookup Santa Susa meltdown. Right-wing talkers love the stuff though, you can't prove Thorium is BS to them any more than you can prove climate change is real.

And you expect us to take you seriously?

Following: A film by the pro nuke industry would show us that in the near future our cars would drive up to a service station once a year to get a nuclear pellet dropped into our fuel tank and that was it for a year of trouble free driving. This Thorium Car is just an updated version of the same old horseshit. I could see through this brainwashing and lies at age 12, although most of my classmates didn't...and we almost lost Detroit due to Enrico Fermi Fast Breeder cooled with liquid sodium that bursts into flames when exposed to air and a simple pump failed...this is so dangerous that future folks, if they exist, will cringe with embarrassment at the stupidity shown by their forebears.

as I said, "What could possibly go wrong?" with this? Seems like a 50 car pile-up in LA would take a whole new meaning when the clean up crew would wearing haz-mat suits and the entire highway would declared a radioactive area for the next millennium (or whatever the 1/2 life of Thorium is).
A fantasy idea to be put on the shelf with the Atomic Bomber that apparently was feasible but spewed out radioactivity as it flew.

The only thing I can recall working along these lines (outside of subs and air-craft carriers) was the famous Big Bus.

And even that had its problems-