Well, I guess not technically wind up cars, those are spring based. But you know those ones what you push forward on the floor a few times and the "zzzzz, zzzz ZZZZZ"? No not sleeping cars. What kinda sucky toys did you have as a kid? Flywheel powered cars.
Flywheels are an excellent energy storage device -battery- when coupled with modern techniques like magnetic bearings, vacuum enclosures and carbon fiber materials. Which means we could start using them for all sorts of uses in place of traditional chemical batteries. Especially now that we're focusing on harnessing inconsistent energy sources like solar and wind. It gets especially cool when you think about using them in space because aside from storing energy, they can be used as gyroscopes to control craft orientation.
So if you will, imagine a car with an electric motor and a flywheel battery. The carbon fiber wheel was charged up days ago to hundreds of thousands of rpm and is sapped little by little to propel the car. You could even use regenerative braking to recoup some of the losses back into the dynamo. Sure there are still a few things to work out like that whole powerful gyroscope in your trunk thing and the random "kinetic energy of a military tank traveling at highway speed" escaping in unintended directions. But hey, I've heard of worse ideas. Like purple ketchup, what the hell was going on there?
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