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Kids Build Soybean Fueled Sports Car
Sterling D. Allan writes "High school students from West Philadelphia High School have designed a sports car that can go from zero to 60 in four seconds and get more than 50 miles to the gallon on soy bean oil. CBS News reports that this unlikely car was the star last week at the Philadelphia Auto Show. Once again, are we seeing the fabled instance of revolutionary technology coming not from the big corporations, but from some unlikely garage. Maybe these guys will open source their design."
I hope that car doesn't have smelly gas like I do from soybeans
maybe someone can fill me in, what's the end consumer cost of soyban oil per gallon and what are its chances of reducing in price (or more likely, increasing) when it's forced into a larger production?
Empty the deep fryer into this container, and those big macs into this bag!
I did a quick search for soybean oil and it was $8.99 (USD) for a single gallon (cheaper than the organics I saw). We're going to have to bring down the price of soybean oil first for this to be viable. I'm sure large scale production and consumption would help things along.
Anyways, its cool to see technology like this floating about. It's too bad the higher institutions of learning aren't seeing developments like they should be.
Now I also wonder what the emissions are like on these things... That is after all the other big concern.
Damn those corporations, they're just beholden to big oil and such and whatnot!...
Hey, did everyone see the new Mac Mini today? Damn that looks cool! I think I'll get a Dell flatscreen and Logitech peripherals to go with it, so I can listen to my MPAA licensed music from anywhere in my Pulte-built home!
Hahah, now that's the kind of unpredictable trolling I actually like.
you can convert any diseal into one that runs on vegetable oil.t ype=scienceNews&storyID=2006-03-01T012042Z_01_N282 18334_RTRIDST_0_SCIENCE-LIFE-BIODIESEL-DC.XML
http://www.greasecar.com/
you can also rent one in LA
http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/newsArticle.aspx?
"Maybe these guys will open source their design."
As opposed to what? Weld the hood in and equip each car with a self-destructing anti-tamper device?
Light a fire for a man and he'll be warm for a day. Light a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
and suggest continued research into alternative fuels. While soybeans are a good renewable source of fuel, it is unlikely we could power enough automobiles for the population of the US or the world for that matter. There just isn't enough farmland to produce the crop needed for this kind of fuel source. Perhaps a combination of fuel cell/bio could be developed for reduced consumption.
Yes, you got first post as far as I can tell without (gasp!) turning my filter off. But ten years from now, when you're running for president, someone's gonna find this confession and you'll be laughed out of the race.
Was it worth it?
No. While this is an amazing thing for these kids to do, I'm sure it's far from revolutionary. The article is pretty sparse on details, but it sounds like they just pieced it together. So probably the reason for the great acceleration and fuel mileage is that it's super light from missing a bunch of important things, such as safety.
Those solar powered vehicles are great, infinite mpg, but if you turn too sharply you're sure to splatter yourself on the pavement which is one of the reasons everybody isn't driving one, not because the big oil companies won't let you (although I'm sure they prefer that you don't)
This is a cute story, but really.. o Will this car pass crash testing? o Will this car pass emissions? If you don't need to pass crash test and emissions, heck...you can just put an engine on a go-kart and do 0-60mph in 4 seconds. This story is only a half-step above the recent perpetual motion machine stories.
I like the idea that it is alternatively fueled, but that's nothing new.
However, you take away safety requirements, and I will make you a fast high mileage car.
Big Deal.
It's just a diesel car. There are many out there already.
I hate to sound like a World Vision commercial, but how the hell can we justify trying to use food as a fuel for our cars when there are millions of people in the world starving?
'Biofuels' are not only an incredibly inefficient use of farming land promoted largely by farmers eager to drive up the price of their produce, they are also a startling example of just how completely oblivious we are to the needs of human beings unfortunate enough not to live in modern technologically advanced nations.
I say, screw the car. Send the soybeans to Africa where they would quite literally and without any doubt whatsoever save lives.
Cue vitriolic abuse from 'realists'...
Read Pynchon.
"They're making billions upon billions of dollars," he says. "And when this car sells, that'll go down -- to low billions upon billions."
I like this kids thinking. He seems to have condensed the entire issue into a soundbite, and it's accurate.
He has faced the first major hurdle in winning the war that needs to be fought: know your enemy.
Been. Done.
using expensive "touch-labor" agri fuels like ethanol and soybean oil will not solve a massive world economy that exists due to coal and oil. where are the kids trying for the holy grail, synthetic gasoline/diesel/crude from organic waste?
....that went around the net for years. This could be the very car. Does it only run on Microsoft roads? Does it sometimes just stop and require you to restart it?
The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln
If this biodiesel process can be applied to enough different types of plants, then it should be possible to pick and choose crops based on what does well in a given area -- after all, we don't have to worry about market pressures and what people want to eat, it's just going to be converted into fuel -- which should minimize the effects of choosing hihg-impact crops.
We've seen stories like this before (although not quite this - um - real) with other alternate fuel or technology vehicles from unlikely sources. The problem is getting it from concept and prototype to a mass-produced, supportable, permitted, useable product. How soon before the technology is purchased by some big company (in the oil industry perhaps), patented, and then filed under 'do not use'? Oh, and how many lawsuits are going to come out siting 'patent infringement' with the final effect being to bancrupt whatever company tries to develop this? And then there's the fuel. Just how many soybeans need to be grown and processed to fill a tank of gas. Now multiply that by the billions of people who will want one of these. It's a great idea, and even better that a functional prototype exists, but there's still a LONG way to go before I can have mine.
- James
I don't understand why they went for soybean oil. It isn't cost effective yet, so why? A car that can do 0 to 60 in 4 seconds and gets 50 mpg is worth buying, even if it does not have anti-lock brakes, etc. Using soybean oil before gas becomes more expensive than soybean oil is a premature optimization. Of course, if gas prices double in the next few years, all sorts of alternative fuels may become reasonable, and it is possible that could happen according to some forecasts.
As for open sourcing the design, why do you begrudge them a profit? You think these kids don't need the money? I do free software because I choose to, but the data don't support the hypothesis that it is a practical way to make a living.
If I was an auto company, I would hire these kids pretty quick. And their teacher too.;-)
The article is sorely lacking in good pictures. Surfing around, the Philadelphia Inquirer has a much more thorough article here.
r er/KRT_packages/archive/graphics/hybrid_car/index. html
They've also got a flash presentation with exploded diagrams of the structure of the car. http://www.realcities.com/multimedia/philly/inqui
And he actually got second post! :<
Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo!
They built a small car that runs on Diesel. Hardly revolutionary. Oh, but they used soy diesel so it's revolutionary. AWSOM!!!
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
I have a plan for a truck that can drive thousands of miles on less then one gallon! Granted, it is a gallon of plutonium, but less then one gallon!
While it is commendable that these kids put together a working car that runs off soybean oil, this isn't a case of "the man" ((TM)) ignoring innovation for evil gasoline powered cars. Soybeans just are not competitive with gasoline. In fact, the entire idea of using crop land to meet our energy issues is a horrible idea in general.
Don't take me for a tree hugging hippy when I say this, but farming is a necessary evil. Don't get me wrong, I love farmed foods. I merrily buy my vegetables without bothering to glance if it is organic or not. I do recognize though that there is a price that comes with this. Very little land in the world can renew itself year after year. Farming by its very definition sucks up nutrients from the ground to be hauled off. Even organic farming is grossly destructive to the ground. More then one civilization in the world has simply collapsed because the soil died. There are entire continents, namely Australia, where there is absolutely no natural soil renewal. Farming almost always has a very high ecological cost. This isn't a trivial cost that we associated with other renewable energies like windmills where a handful of birds die. These are very serious nation threatening costs.
Certainly you can use fertilizers to keep the soil alive. With good farming practices like what are seen in the US and much of the first world you can keep the land fertile almost indifferently. Even so, these nations pay a heavy cost to keep their farmland fertile and watered. The environmental damage outside of the farm can be serious. When lesser educated farms in third world nations use these methods to keep the soil alive the result can be catastrophe for the environment.
We don't want more land to go to farming. We don't want more third world nations to burn down their trees to try and feed the agro business. Resorting to farming as a source of energy should be the last resort we fall back on, not the first. Algae, solar collector making, and wind power to make more fuel? Great. Creating a greater demand for farm land to make more fuel? Terrible idea.
So, congratulations to these kids for making a fun proof of concept, but this isn't the future of fuel.
This story is actually quite old. Here is much more detail from May 2005:
2 6857&sid=e282f1c82635fb59cb7a4e36afedb380.nyud.net :8080
http://www.xceedspeed.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=
Whenever the offence inspires less horror than the punishment, the rigour of penal law is obliged to give way...
... that this thing ONLY runs on soybean oil, that it is so finely tuned that other vegetable oils either don't run well or get terrible mileage.
Infuriate left and right
While your tone could stand to be more friendly, I agree with you.
I thought it was fantastic that the author of TFA decided to add that editorial comment from a high school dropout who has politics and the world economy figured out.
Look, it's a cute story, I actually think I might be impressed a little because, from at least one angle, this car might actually look nice. But c'mon. Nothing was invented here. These kids didn't discover anything or create anything really new. In fact, I have trouble believing they can even drive this car around Philadelphia at this time of year - it's much harder when your fuel is frozen.
It's a good shop project, but it really isn't a great Auto Show exhibit.
But I'm from Detroit, maybe we're just more picky, or something crazy like that.
Cool idea, always nice to see some alternative options, although at 9$ a gallon im not sure soybean oil is exactly the fuel of the future. None the less good job.
Sounds like it's basically a Diesel most of which will run on vegitable oils. It's the performance that sounds impressive. Diesels have a lot of power but aren't known for their 0 to 60 abilities. Just good to see one of the excuses for gasoline disproven. Soy oil is expensive but if you compare the mileage against a normal sports car it isn't that far off. The problem is demand. There isn't enough soy oil produced on the planet to keep the US in fuel. The biodiesel itself would likely come from multiple sources and be blended. I lean on the side of alcohol based fuels since it's far easier to grow sugar crops than oil crops. The real problem will be going to 100% alcohol. The ATF is not going to be happy with that one. You may never see a commercial grain alcohol fuel availible since there is easy access then to cheap drinkable alcohol. I'm guessing they will always blend it with something to keep it from being potable.
My girlfriend made a model-size car that ran on biodiesel for her chemical engineering undergrad. The biodiesel was made from used cooking oil from the school cafeteria (it can apparently be made from almost any natural oils). I doubt it would pass emissions though... when the thing was running it smelled like a barbeque gone horribly wrong!
Looks like the big bad oil companies hang around /.
Hell no.
They should patent the design and accrue all the royalties they can. I think they've earned it; whats more is that if they release the design under a free licence, automotive corporations will just capitalise on it anyway.
Sig free's the way to be.
My brain has turned to muush.Try a more random aproach
CBS was a little late on this one... This story stormed the internet around August/September of last year, and I found articles about it dated May 2005. They bought a K-1 Kit car and modified it to run a 1.9L VW biodiesel engine for the back tires and electric for the front. It's called "The Hybrid Attack" and it won the hybrid and alternative fuel category in the 2005 Tour de Sol.
I'm pretty sure you'd have the same exact problem with soy plants as you would with fuel derived from corn, and that is the amount of land you have to produce it. I know that for corn, in order to replace the current supply of oil you'd need a heck of a lot of extra land, way more than what is currently available...
I dunno, I would vote for some one with first post who didn't claim they got first post in the first post if they ran for president and posting about beans giving them smelly gas was the worste amunition the oposition can come up with.
Tis unless i had to sit next to them.
The car is built up from a K1 Attack kit, which is a European competitor to the Lotus Elise. The Attack began as a kit car, and they've only recently started selling already-built cars in Europe. The only way to get them in the USA is in kit form. The most immediately noticeable difference between the Elise and the Attack is that the Attack has no roof (and I presume no heat or A/C) and is strictly a fair-weather car. The Attack is far from being able to pass US safety regulations (bumper, crash testing, etc), which is one reason why it's only available here as a kit. Even the more highly-developed Elise needs a regulatory exemption to be sold here. Starting in 2007 we're supposed to see a redesigned Elise that actually meets US standards.
e r_pre.php
If I'd built the thing, I would have bypassed all the hybrid technology (which is mostly hype, IMHO) and simply dropped a turbo-diesel engine into the Attack. I'm hoping that Lotus might someday build a diesel-powered Elise, that would be interesting (but I've seen no hint that they're interested in doing it). VW have shown something similar in principle, it was their Eco-Racer concept car. But there's no telling whether they will produce it.
As for bio-fuels, I have this to say: ALGAE
It's true that soybeans are not the most efficient crop for making bio-diesel fuel. It's true that growing conventional crops requires burning a lot of fuel (not to mention pesticides & fertilizer) that detracts from your energy yield. And of course they would compete against food crops for arable land. That doesn't mean you can write off biofuel. We've had articles in the past here on Slashdot about growing algae for biodiesel fuel, but everybody forgets so quickly. Tsk.
Biodiesel from algae:
http://www.unh.edu/p2/biodiesel/article_alge.html
http://www.greenfuelonline.com/
VW Ecoracer:
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2005/12/vw_ecorac
This is one hell of a car, just reading the chapter or two was enough to make me want one, seeing a picture of that car made me drool over it... seeing the video and a little bit more of it... Well, now i'm ready to start saving to get one of those rather than a Skyline GT-R32!
Soybean might currently cost much in volumes, but given enough people using it as fuel, prices are going to drop, and they are going to drop way below regular gas as it's renewable source!
Just makes one wonder... What are we eating? x)
Pulsed Media Seedboxes
Nothing new here.
Diesels can be run on almost any kind of oil: corn, soy, whale...but probably will end up running on a kind of algae since it is by weight 50% oil or so. Consider this info I got from the wikipedia article:
* Soybean: 40 to 50 US gal/acre (35 to 45,000 L/km)
* Rapeseed: 110 to 145 US gal/acre (100 to 130,000 L/km)
* Mustard: 140 US gal/acre (130,000 L/km)
* Jatropha: 175 US gal/acre (160,000 L/km)
* Palm oil: 650 US gal/acre (580,000 L/km) [6]
* Algae: 10,000 to 20,000 US gal/acre (9,000,000 to 18,000,000 L/km)
Sounds economically and environmentally tenable to me. Why economically? We won't have a choice in the matter as economical sustainability will have to equal environmental sustainability since the environment itself is taking such a beating; the exernalities must be considered when it comes to industry since we get exactly one planet to live on. Since the algae doesn't compete with farm land or water, it is the only teneable solution. Emmissions are just fine. The CO2 coming out was the CO2 taken in by the algae during production. For this reason I contend that this is a good way to sequester extra CO2 in addition to closing the carbon cycle: local, state and national governments could subsidize the production of algae-biodiesel (it's cheaper than you might think) to not only lower the the costs of fuel (a boon since the US economy, for example, hingies on cheap fuel) but also clean the air. There are slightly higher NOx emissions but they can be fixed with catalytic converters. Also see this.
Open Source their design?
It's a fucking car. Stop applying software and systems terminology to mechanical items. There is nothing to Open Source. If they designed this car at school then one can argue it is public domain. Also, it is quite easy to convert a motor to run on bio based oils and fuels.
"Open Source" it.. You're worse than a fucking corporate meeting with some marketing dick who only speaks buzzwords.
there is a kid in philadelphia named cheeseborough.
not if demand rises and the supply of soybeans plummets.
when demand for those soybeans outstrips the supply and the cost of the beans triples what will that do to the cost of the fuel ?
Ill bet most people wont care to much for the boidiesal when it costs $12.00 per gallon.
More efficient useage of our energy is whats needed.
If everyone carpooled with one person on every trip they made that would cut automobile fuel demand in half.
Think of that if our country suddenly didnt need half of the current fuel we use what would that do to increase our fuel supply.
If the automobile manufacturers would increase mileage by 10% that would cut automobile fuel usage by 10%.
Think of all the fuel savings that could be done on a large scale. 2% here 2% there it would certainly add up.
Biodiesal if the most ineffiecnt use of solar power there is today.
The major push for a crop based fuel comes from industries that supply the crops, they have a vested intrest in icreasing demand.
Linux has always been for the "circumstantially asexual" (you know, the can't get any crew) and virgins.
Windows is for the "normal people" - in the "we're all individuals", just like everybody else kind of way.
was that open source comment so it will get posted to slashdot or something? "maybe they'll open source their design"
I'm sure in about a week we'll see something like "Kids who made soybean powered car exposed as hoax." (this message paid for by the Oil Producing Companies of America)
GJC
Gregory Casamento
## Chief Maintainer for GNUstep
I mean, it's great to have a nice design that does good in the wind tunnel.
But we Americans need to transport many big boxes. Therefore a cubic shape is ideal. The Hummer was a little big, and the Scion/Squarion was a little small. But a perfect cube would be the ideal shape. It is obvious how the SUV positively differentiate themselves from Minivans. They are squarer(?).
Does it have a fartpipe?
Both are essentiall trying to maintain the industrial complex of the existing oil infrastructure. Yes ethanol and soy are renewable, but they come at a cost, and are not all that energy efficient (a lot of fuel is spent to plant and harvest corn or soybeans, to process it into fuel, and to transport it). Plus, this things isn't running on soybean oil, it's running biodiesel. That's only 20% soybean oil, and the rest is good old petroleum distillate.
The best option right now for clean and efficient transportation is electric technology with hybrid capabilities. Most people use their vehicles so little per day, that a nightly charge from a household outlet would let them run without ever burning anything. The hybrid would be there for longer drives, just to keep the charge up.
The electric grid, for all it's faults, is a clean and efficient way to move power around the country, in fact right to your door. And it lets us centralize and isolate the nastiness (coal, nuclear, propane) that goes into creating electricity.
Italy, the home of the Pope, has one of the world's lowest birth rates.
They actually sell cars with this sort of *mileage* - better even.
:) Now, if only the rest of the US could
Check out www.skoda.uk.co for one of the best mileages for a station
wagon. (Of course, we're talking diesel here - and as other posts
have pointed out, bio diesel has been around for a bit.)
But, then the US consumer market is being duped by the cry for
BIG POWERFUL *SAFE* cars (== gas-guzzling) - so its no wonder
that this mileage is seen as amazing.
On the plus - its great to see kids who've had no direction doing
something really positive.
catch up with the idea of demanding more fuel efficient cars!
How come there isn't a Car topic icon on Slashdot?
Well, that's one step closer to a car that runs on hopes and dreams I guess.
are we seeing the fabled instance of revolutionary technology coming not from the big corporations
Inventions do not come from corporations. The modern workplace is simply incompatible with entrepreneurial thought. Period.
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
Industrial soy oil is way cheaper. If soy oil works, so could a lot of other oils that are currently used for all sorts of purposes.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Kind of like popcorn, and yes I am referring to soybean oil burning fuel.
It shouldn't cost all that much if you grow your own. Even if you don't have the time and land to do it yourself, $2.50/gallon is a bargain since it will take you twice as far. Hell, my performance car can't do 0-60 in 4 seconds even if I stripped the interior bare; I'd have to go forced induction to achieve that.
One of my ideas for retirement is to get a farm to live off of the land and additionally grow canola beans to make biodiesel. Making biodiesel is a pretty simple process: extract the oil, add the appropriate mix of lye, and you end up with biodiesel on the top and glycerine on the bottom. You can use the glycerine for a number of things from makeing soap to explosives: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glycerine
Emisions I'm curious about but I like this for the 'garage tech' media-bubble angle. It's got everything:
... hold on while I turn down iTunes ...
Dropout students go straight A
Bad guys (big oil)
Philly (tenuous Rocky ref: cue: Gonna Drive Now)
Hoping for the all-in-one grease/solar/bio/gas-if-need-be transition vehicle (from a Southern California garage most likely) but for timely media hype this story is good; get kids working on something besides beats. Not that big oil has anything to worry about - nothing ever gets started in a garage
Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it.
This story is only a half-step above the recent perpetual motion machine stories.
This story is a half-step to a story of a car that goes 0-60 in 4s at 50mpg of biodiesel and passes emissions and crash testing.
The points are valid but not show-stoppers. This is a working prototype, a point about half-way between the idea and a final product, and more importantly a point beyond most stumble-and-crash obstacles, that is ones that make the final product impossible. Now that they have something to show, they can start thinking of passing all the tests, preparing the model for mass manufacturing, getting from development to production.
There's just one big show-stopper hurdle in front of them yet. $$$, big, big $$$, especially these in hands of oil corporations. They would pay a lot to have the project cancelled.
Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
You simply don't get it, do you?! Bio-diesel is not about how much you spend on gas.
...) plant through the process called photosynthesis emits O2 (oxygen) and collects the CO2 (carbon-dioxide) in exchange. When you burn the bio-diesel in your engine, the SAME amount of CO2 gets back to the atmosphere, not more! It's a closed cycle. No harm done.
BIO-DIESEL IS ABOUT CLEAN ENERGY!
While petro-diesel adds extra amount of CO2 (carbon-dioxide) to the atmosphere it causes the green-house effect that heats up the Earth, melts the glaciers, the icecap on the poles, dries out lakes, kills species. Yes, the green-house effect is caused by YOU, too!
Bio-diesel is clean. The soy (peanut, canola,
Bio-diesel has other advantages, as well. It's non-toxic. It's non-flamable, ie. does not explode during an accident. Get yourself educated about this matter: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biodiesel
In Europe there are already many gas stations that sell bio-diesel. And is cheaper, too! But the USA... Come on! Have you heard of the Kyoto pact? Countries by signing that pact made a promise that they will reduce their CO2-emission. Your president did not sign that pact (it was during his first mandate). Because he did not want to tell to his "fellow americans" - to YOU - to get your fat ass out of your car, while he knew, if he does that, he does not get re-ellected. Many lives would have been spared in Iraq... And while YOU can drive your car and have your daily road-rage YOU don't give a shit, that the 4 giants: your Government, the Car builders, the Oil Companies and Weapon Manufacturers go happily hand-in-hand. Ever wondered how come no american company builds hybrids? (Except for those couple of thousand pick-ups GM built for Mimami)...
(No, I don't own a car, I ride each day 10 miles on my bycicle to get to work and I'm healty and have a beautyful body and no overweight. When I rent a car I rent a diesel and I tank bio-diesel only.)
Everyone's regurgitating the same old environmental debates as always. What I'm wondering is how did they manage 0-60 in 4.0 seconds?! A 2005 Mustang GT can't break 5. A 2005 Corvette can do 4.2. Most 'reasonably' priced Porches can't break 4.
- 60times.html
http://www.albeedigital.com/supercoupe/articles/0
I'm quite sure I just read an article about kids building a Soylent Green Fueled Sports Car. I mean, who told them about Soylent Green in the first place?
Sipping on Jolt and Dew. Laid back. With my mind of my cubicle and my cubicle on my mind.
a) There's nothing to patent. They used somebody elses engine, fueled on a fuel that's been around for a while, stuck it in a lightweight body and put in a huge electric motor. A patent has to have novelty.
b) If they had invented something worth patenting they've established prior art ( if a big 3 tried to fake prior art it would cost them an arm and a leg). But they haven't so it doesn't matter , see (a)
Excellent project for a school, I don't know how they funded it.
If it burns, then you can make a fuel out of it. If it grows, you can make a fuel out of it. We're not dependant on one single solution or plant for our needs, we can make ethanol out of almost any carbohydrate to replace gasoline and oil out of any crop rich in fat to replace diesel. The current fleet of engines can be converted to drive well on either mixture of gasoline/ethanol or diesel/vegetable oil with little effort and cheap components. As for the economy - biofuel is essentially solar power that takes the route via plants. The process of converting that into a liquid fuel is not as efficient as drilling a hole in the ground and letting oil spurt into a barrell, but as the cost is essentially energy and the energy is by definition growing in the fields and concentrated in your biofuel plant - then all it means is that it takes a certain amount of area to farm up a certain amount of fuel, and that cost will vary dependant on the type of crop and fuel and weather and soil and what have you. So don't buy the typical oil propaganda that says that it's pointless to produce biofuel because it takes more energy to produce a unit of biofuel than the unit itself holds, because that is only saying that the efficiency of the entire manufacturing process is less than 50%. What's interesting is ONLY how much a gallon will cost in the end. It's akin to claiming that Otto engines can't possibly work because their efficiency is about 25%, meaning that they consume three units of energy for every one unit performed...
I did a quick search for soybean oil and it was $8.99 (USD) for a single gallon (cheaper than the organics I saw). We're going to have to bring down the price of soybean oil first for this to be viable.
I think that since the biggest market for soybean oil is for human (and animal?) consumption that the refining process is more expensive than it has to be--fuel grade soybean oil using exising technology might be a bit cheaper, plus there is economy in scale--much larger batches would be produced/distributed for use as fuel than for food.
Also, you make it sound like US$9 per US gallon is really expensive for a fuel. It is actually only the case in the US. At the height of post-Katrina hysteria in Canada fuel in Montreal peaked at nearly CA$1.35 per LITRE. That is already over US$4.50 per US gallon. If the claim of 50MPG is true and it is for mixed driving then that is nearly double the fuel economy of a typical gasoline vehicle. That means that for that week in Montreal when gas was over CA$1.30/Litre that fuel costs for the Soy-powered car would be LESS than gasoline right now...running on food-grade soybean oil!
The situation is already the norm in Europe and Australia. If you take the price of gasoline in the UK and do the exchange/conversion, they're probably already paying close to US$9 for 1 US gallon of gasoline.
If this car is for real these kinds and their school deserve a huge award...they could be future Nobel candidates IMO.
that sounds just wonderful. off you go. bye :)
No, BIODIESEL IS SOYLENT GREEN! We've gotta stop them somehow!
... and then they built the supercollider.
While I applaud the efforts, the Model T was built with hemp and designed to run on hempseed oil. The harvest period of hemp is a fraction of the soybean crop and no pesticides are needed. Meh...
/ sarcasm
It's my understanding that Africa is rife with over population, disease, and political instability, especially in the areas where people are starving. How is more food going to do anything but increase the size of a suffering population? (assuming the food makes it to the intended recipients, rather than increasing the wealth and power of the warlord in charge) Then of course, once you've "tampered with their ecosystem" you must continue to send more food to feed their otherwise unsustainable population. Either that or you have starvation that is much worse and on a much larger scale.
Maybe these guys will open source their design.
What TF? No, I hope these guys do not Open Source they design, you see, neither Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Michael Dell nor Marcus Samuel made their buisness by giving away their technology.
I hope these people can get some funding and maybe start a company, who knows, it may become a good energy source.
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
This is hardware, you want to know how it works, take it apart and look!
Now, if you're wondering whether or not they'll take out any patents on it, that's an entirely different question - and in fact, in order to patent something, you have to "open source" it; how it works is *in* the patent.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
Incase you guys missed it http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/13796737.htm this isn't the first car like this and it's not a completely new or radical design.. it's just not popular yet
Frankly, biodiesel and such fuels have been around for a while. These kids have simply figured out how to apply such tech to a car that basically would have worked with (or without) it regardless. The only thing that makes this concept so unique, is that so far no high school students have done the same.
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
This debate (about how to, or whether it's even possible to, viably replace fossil fuels with some other energy source) has appeared on Slashdot many times recently. I see a lot of people missing the big picture.
Fossil fuels are not a root energy source. They are just an efficient form of matter for storing collected energy. Energy only comes from one root source, and that's the transformation of matter to energy via spontaneous nuclear reaction.
Another thing worth noting: collecting and storing energy is a slow process compared to how quickly we use it up. That's why we're stuck. Fossil fuels took millions of years to store up their energy, and now we're using it up way faster than it took to store it. No solution we come up with will truly work unless it's faster to store up the energy than it is to use it up.
Now, on with the lesson... all energy on Earth came from one of three places: (1) nuclear energy emitted by the sun, (2) nuclear energy emitted by the earth's core, or (3) nuclear energy emitted by man-made nuclear reactors. That's it. There are no other significant root sources of energy here on our little planet.
Fossil fuels are basically an organic form of "solar cell plus battery", with the solar collection happening beneath the earth's atmosphere. They are the result of plants collecting the sun's radiation and storing in the form of organic matter (and of animals who eat the plants and each other for energy and then ultimately die and decompose). Even if you had a 100% efficient solar cell and a 100% perfect battery, it would take a long damn time to store up enough energy to run your car for an hour. A solar solution, where the solar collection takes place beneath the earth's atmosphere, is clearly not going to work.
The same problem is going to therefore exist with any approach involving organic compounds grown on the earth's surface, because all of those approaches are just variations on solar power. Almost all energy stored in organic matter on this planet is just collected solar energy, because the very top node of the food chain for almost living things is the sun. (Yes, there are technically some exceptions, such as microorganisms that live in the bottom of hot springs, but in that case they are consuming heat energy generated by the nuclear reaction of the earth's core).
The only viable solutions to the fossil fuel shortage are: (1) tapping into the earth's core, (2) somehow getting an energy collector beyond the earth's atmosphere and closer to the sun, or (3) using man-made nuclear reactors. Any approach that involves merely trying to extract stored solar energy from organic compounds grown on the earth's surface is doomed to failure because that process takes longer than the process of using up the energy.
NOTE: This is a repost... I forgot to enter my credentials before posting the last one as AC. Please moderate this one and not the other one. Thanks.
This debate (about how to, or whether it's even possible to, viably replace fossil fuels with some other energy source) has appeared on Slashdot many times recently. I see a lot of people missing the big picture.
Fossil fuels are not a root energy source. They are just an efficient form of matter for storing collected energy. Energy only comes from one root source, and that's the transformation of matter to energy via spontaneous nuclear reaction.
Another thing worth noting: collecting and storing energy is a slow process compared to how quickly we use it up. That's why we're stuck. Fossil fuels took millions of years to store up their energy, and now we're using it up way faster than it took to store it. No solution we come up with will truly work unless it's faster to store up the energy than it is to use it up.
Now, on with the lesson... all energy on Earth came from one of three places: (1) nuclear energy emitted by the sun, (2) nuclear energy emitted by the earth's core, or (3) nuclear energy emitted by man-made nuclear reactors. That's it. There are no other significant root sources of energy here on our little planet.
Fossil fuels are basically an organic form of "solar cell plus battery", with the solar collection happening beneath the earth's atmosphere. They are the result of plants collecting the sun's radiation and storing in the form of organic matter (and of animals who eat the plants and each other for energy and then ultimately die and decompose). Even if you had a 100% efficient solar cell and a 100% perfect battery, it would take a long damn time to store up enough energy to run your car for an hour. A solar solution, where the solar collection takes place beneath the earth's atmosphere, is clearly not going to work.
The same problem is going to therefore exist with any approach involving organic compounds grown on the earth's surface, because all of those approaches are just variations on solar power. Almost all energy stored in organic matter on this planet is just collected solar energy, because the very top node of the food chain for almost living things is the sun. (Yes, there are technically some exceptions, such as microorganisms that live in the bottom of hot springs, but in that case they are consuming heat energy generated by the nuclear reaction of the earth's core).
The only viable solutions to the fossil fuel shortage are: (1) tapping into the earth's core, (2) somehow getting an energy collector beyond the earth's atmosphere and closer to the sun, or (3) using man-made nuclear reactors. Any approach that involves merely trying to extract stored solar energy from organic compounds grown on the earth's surface is doomed to failure because that process takes longer than the process of using up the energy.
Moderator hint: a comment is neither "Flamebait" nor "Troll" if it is true.
You are completely, utterly wrong. Since most Americans are car passengers but not motorcycle riders, your statistics are completely unrelated to the relative safety of cars and motorcycles. In fact, motorcycle riders are 35 times more likely to die from an accident than car passengers.
main(c,r){for(r=32;r;) printf(++c>31?c=!r--,"\n":c<r?" ":~c&r?" `":" #");}
So if fossil oil is made from fossils, soybean oil is made from soybeans, I have a suggestion for an infinitely renewable energy resource: Let's make cars that run on baby oil! Babies are quite easy (and fun!) to manufacture....
Of course, the oiligopoli will shortly be putting a stop to the technology, either by buying out, or by "other means". Doubt me? Wait and see.
and threatened them due to the Oil Cartels worry over Soya Beans taking over the world and eating into their profits. Or am I just becoming Dan Brown?
Excellent -- more proof that my proposition for eliminating dependence on nonrenewable energy will work!
And you don't even have to use FRESH oil as your fuel, if you don't mind your exhaust smelling like a chippie! This was a news story in the UK around 2003/2004 (possibly earlier) when motorists in South Wales started using cheap vegetable oil in preference to rather more expensive diesel.
/ content_objectid=13489386_method=full_siteid=50082 _headline=-Grant-to-promote-use-of-car-fuel-from-c hip-shops-name_page.html
What folk in the US have to remember in costing these fuels is that not everyone has such CHEAP roadfuel. Current UK petrol prices are around 85/87 pence per litre ( $5.52 per US gallon) and diesel is around 91 pence per litre. Sunflower and other vegetable oils retail at about 40p/litre for the cheapest brands. So bio-fuels are VERY cost effective here, if you ignore the Inland Revenue who take their duty cut on all road fuel sales as well as ordinary sales tax...
Here's some references to the South Wales stories
http://icwales.icnetwork.co.uk/0100news/0200wales
http://www.vegoilmotoring.com/
He lives in the Vatican city, an entirely seperate country.
How many Italians do you think actually listen to his "no birth control" bullcrap anymore anyway? I'm guessing not one hell of a lot (perhaps more in southern italy).
.. if you use the right strain, road rage in traffic jams becomes a thing of the past..
"Hey man, you cut me up!"
* inhales DHC rich exhaust fumes *
"Who cares, dude. Wanna grab some pie?"
Increasing the food supply will make the world food supply more robust, even if it is used for fuel. Think of it as a failsafe system against global hunger; any society that grows enough to make fuels will be able to feed off their fuel crops in times of crisis. It doesn't solve the issue of getting food distributed to poor countries, but by reducing fuel prices, it does help the situation.
It wipes out the local economy. We've been waging economic warfare on African farmers for the last 50-60 years now.
Deleted
As a soon to be father, something else strikes me about this. Yeah, I'd love a sports car that gets 50mpg (even on diesel that's an impressive number), but it's no big deal to do it with a small diesel engine, electric motors, and some Super-Capacitors. (the bio-diesel part is pure hype)
But that some kids, who everyone considered 'lost' did this. It says something about how damaged our education model is. That if kids can't sit still and memorize lists of minutia they must be dumb. Look at a list of great people in history, and you will find few of them that were good at sitting still, often that not sitting still is what got the job done.
Some kids, particularly girls, gravitate toward a structured learning style. Many don't. And an educational system that does not teach students who are difficult to teach is a failure. Kids who learn easy could learn on their own, with just a little parental motivation. Schools exist for those students who would not learn easily, who need mentors, who need people to look in them and find their gifts.
These kids needed to learn with their hands, from trial and error. There are so many parts to this project, from welding/machining skills to software and electrical design. This isn't light stuff, it takes communication, math, science, budgeting and research skills. And it excites the kids, it's like stealth algebra.
We need to learn for examples like this, to find broader definitions of the word 'teach'. Otherwise we will only be harnessing a small percentage of our 'natural resources.
I would rather be ashes than dust!
The starvation problem is a problem of the distribution of foods.
There are already enough foods available for all people on this planet.
The argument of "feeding the hungry" is an argument of the crop, gen-tech and fertilizer business / lobby.
Grundgesetz * 23. Mai 1949 - 30. November 2007 - http://www.vorratsdatenspeicherung.de/
The auto industry or government agencies will probably offer them jobs.
In related news... The students that declined job offers from the government have all died in a tragic school bus accident.
The breakthrough is not when someone develops a highly efficient alternative to petroleum but when they survive long enough for it to come to market!
Soybean oil == "vegetable oil." This is nothing revolutionary, you can do this with any diesel vehicle already.
What's your take on the Copaifera tree? It's 'product' can be put into an engine with no modification.
p aifera_langsdorfii.html is a good start...
it's pretty much stuck to south america type climates.
(look around, it's amazing to me)
Would it offend your sensability as an alternative?
http://www.hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/duke_energy/Co
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
I was always raised to never destroy an idea without suggesting one, otherwise the critic cannot be constructive.
... hum... ok i dont know about nitrogen fuel's impacts ... and electric cars destroys the ecosystem because we'll need more and more power stations. I know that one for a fact because I live in a country with a lot of them, water dams to be precise, it not only affect the rivers it affects miles & miles around the rivers.
So, bearing that in mind, what would you suggest ?
Personally, I'm not an expert in farming, even less in soybeans, in fact, my expertise area resides in far far away land from the land of farming! What I do know is that we *need* alternate fuels.... and very soon.
What would solve the most issues ?
More fossil fuel ?
More farming -> soybean fuel ?
Nitrogen fuel ?
Electric cars ?
All of these possibilities have HUGE ecological impact when you bring them to the world scale. fossil fuel destroy the atmosphere, soybean fuel destroys the soil, nitrogen fuel
Before you explain it, I had no idea that farming had an ecological impact on the soil, in fact, I thought farming was good for the land by transforming an otherwise not very viable soil into a viable one.
Ultimately, I believe we'll need to pick a combination of all possibilities, knowing that each choice will have an ecological impact anyway.
If you look like your passport photo, you're too ill to travel. - Will Kommen
In case some of you haven't ben keeping up with the news, a guys in Germany started making if from his trash: http://www.grist.org/news/daily/2005/09/15/5/ Even save you a walk to the curb for you lazy ones. Now we have an in-exhaustable supply and can it can help keep out water clean as well.
If only one person lived in Africa there would be plenty of food, water, oil etc... and they wouldn't contribute to global warming.
If billions or people live in Africa there are food shortages, water shortages, oil shortages and they are all going to contribute to global warming and resource deprivation some time soon.
Answer, less people. (The same goes for most other continents too!)
They didn't actually design the car. It's a K1 attack kit car, and they put a diesel motor in it and converted it to biodiesel. It may have even come with the diesel. This is all getting blown out of proportion because of their background. Any one of us could probably build this thing in our garage in a couple months.
Soybean oil is a by-product of agricultural processing of foods. The biodiesel market does not yet even come close to comsuming all of that excess (hundreds of millions of gallons per year).
If anything, increasing soy crops due to fuel demand would increase the available food supply as it edges-out the least efficient methods of food production like raising livestock, which needs about 10X the land area to produce the same nutritional value.
Also, soy is a legume and used as a rotation crop to replenish the soil.
The more we keep sending over, the less they learn to do it on their own. And 'do it on their own' doesn't have to mean 'growing in inhospitable' areas; 'do it on their own' might mean more educated people building infrastructure to move the food already produced as that is the problem: food distribution.
... you know why? Because the people 'learned' that all they had to do was 'nothing' and it was given free. Aside from teaching dependence, it also *destroys* the drive for local businesses to be created and thrive ... who can compete with free right?
... kinda like a battery; not really 'new energy'.
My first eye-opener to this was listening to a Kenyan (I believe) rail on aid groups for sending clothes and food, year after year after year
Now, back to 'food as fuel'. I seem to recall reading an article by a fellow who was quite concerned about sustaining that sort of thing. Ties in with people thinking hydrogen is some magic energy resource when it's only an energy-tranfer vehicle
that's just wrong...
but mod it funny anyway.
In West Philidelphia, born and raised, on the playground is where I spent most of my days, chilling out max and relaxing out cool, and yo shooting some B ball outside of the school
nothing
in a chem lab was where they spent most of their days rebuilding cars outside the school and using the soybean, that was their fuel
This reminds me of the 6th grader who wins the science fair with a working quantum computer. His father, a quantum physics, assured everyone his son did it all by himself.
Your parents drove sedans and station wagons. They had larger families and therefore a need to carry more people and stuff than today's Americans. While urbanites treat it like a luxury car, the SUV is essentially a pick-up transformed into a small awkward station wagon. SUV's have the inferior gas milage, handling and stopping power of a light truck, yet are no safer in a crash than any large car. Insecure drivers like SUV's because they feel safer in a large vehicle and sit "tall in the saddle" so they can see farther. I also have a theory that a large proportion of male SUV drivers have tiny little penises.
-- "At Microsoft, quality is job 1.1" -- PC Magazine, Nov. 1994
Soybeans? No way. I'll stick to my rice-rocket, thanks.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Sports car and 50 + mpg? They're gunna die.
I smell a light weight body and a motorcycle like engine. Sure you can do it. Then suck it up when you get into a fender bender with a Dodge Ram 3500 and you're suddenly a hood ornament.
A serious amount of weight goes into a car for protection. Take that away and you're riding around in a light weight coffin just looking for a hole. If EVERYONE used these it would be barely doable. Semi-trailers would rule the road, but they basically do now anyway. Still, people would die in droves. Not that we can't stand to do with a few less people, but I'd prefer to see darwinian selection based on something more substantial than an attraction to fast sports cars.
- real hackers don't have sigs -
Appended as preface at http://pesn.com/2006/02/28/9600238_High_School_Soy _Sports_Car/
Feb. 30, 2006
I spoke this morning by phone with Simon Hauger who is the director of the West Philadelphia High School auto program.
He said that his students have been working on this car for a couple of years, and that they ran it in the Tour de Sol and won their division in May 2005. The 50 mpg mileage was well documented there.
They were then able to enter the car into the Philadelphia Car Show, where the car was the star of the show.
The Philadelphia Inquirer ran a feature, which CBS News then noticed and came to the school to run the feature which they aired a week ago.
Hauger said that the camera crews were there for an entire day and took four hours of footage.
"You never know what they will select to include in their three minutes of air time," he said.
The coverage had generated a lot of favorable media interest.
The question that gets asked over and over, he said, was "Why aren't the major automobile manufacturers doing this?"
"It kind of begs the question," he said. "This is all off-the-shelf stuff. These kids are not geniuses, and look at what they have been able to come up with on a shoestring budget."
What's under the hood is a VW turbo diesel in the back, and an AC propulsion electric motor in the front.
They're still working out some issues with the hybrid aspect of the car, and did not use that in winning the Tour de Sol.
In other words, the technology exists in presently-manufactured automobiles to achieve these kinds of efficiencies and power. Why aren't the major automobile companies doing this as a matter of course?
-- Sterling D. Allan
Tomorrow's news yesterday -- the bleeding, visionary edge.
..but the car in the pics is a K1 Attack: http://www.k1-attack.cz/ It's a VERY light car (I'd say around 650 kg), hence the high performance and low consumption. I have a car (kind of, but still road legal) that weighs 400 kg (430 kg with some fuel), does around 4 sec 0-60 mph (0-100 kph) with just 128 bhp: http://www.locost.es/ Cheers, Alex
How much does this car weight? THAT is likely how it gets 50mpg and 0-60 in 4sec. Put on all the safety requirements the government demands on it and it'll probably gain a couple thousand pounds.
they'll do anything to avoid drinking soymilk
For various reasons, diesels do not have nearly the efficiency penalty that gasoline engines do when operating at low loads. As a result, resizing the engine to be smaller won't really help that much. Plus most of the acceleration comes from the electric motor I suspect, just as it does with most other hybrids.
BTW, the main reason diesels are so much more efficient than gasoline engines is the way they are throttled. In a gasoline engine (Otto or Atkinson cycle), if the fuel burns too lean (too much air), the combustion temperature increases significantly and increases NOx emissions, and more importantly, tends to melt parts of the engine. The result is that to throttle down a gasoline engine, you can't just remove fuel - you need to remove AIR and adjust fuel delivery as appropriate, by essentially choking the engine's air supply. Thus at low loads the engine is essentially breathing through a tiny straw, and paying penalties in pumping losses.
Diesels, on the other hand, usually do not have any throttles in their air intake, they CAN be throttled simply by adjusting fuel supply. (I'm not sure why it is that they don't have to deal with lean burning, I'm guessing that one reason is that fuel is injected during the combustion cycle, rather than being premixed prior to ignition.) Since the engine never has to breathe through a straw (Although I think some large trucks do have options for switching a restrictor into the exhaust to allow for engine breaking), it can operate much more efficiently at low loads.
Diesels also happen to have higher peak efficiencies, but that doesn't affect choice of engine sizing nearly as much as the lack of pumping losses at low loads.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
To be clear on one point: growing crops for biodiesel does not have to compete with food crops. The wise and time-honored tradition of crop rotation has farmers growing a crop in a field one year, then growing a different batch the next in order to help the soil recover and be better able to grow food again the next year. Farmers could use the soybeans they raise on the land one year, sell it for a profit (soybean prices are currently rising thanks to the growing demand for biodiesel), and raise corn or wheat the next.
You're correct about everything else. And yes, soybeans are not the most efficient crop to use for fuels. Canola oil would be better. And I wonder, how would hemp do?
-- haaz.
There are other ways to make biodiesel that may be more beneficial in the long run for everyone. I think I saw this in a /. article a little while ago. This seems like a no-brainer. Unfortunately, the technology is a little late in coming as many power plants are investing millions in other methods of cleaning emissions to meet tight govt. regulations about air quality standards in cities.
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/2006-01-10-al gae-powerplants_x.htm
What strikes me is the terrific Leadership role shown by the teacher. He is even letting his students take all the lime light. I would really like to see an indepth article on how the teacher set up this group and hopw he managed and provided the leadership touches. The project itself is great and the students deserve a lot of credit, more than that in fact:) But imagine if this teacher could teach his style of ...well "teaching" and inspiring kids to other teachers. What progress our educational system might make.
Please someone pick up on this.....
On another subject:
All the talk of alternative fuel engines etc is great. But does everyone realise that in 2006 the USA will be an IMPORTERR of ETHANOL! Why? Because the USA does not produce enough......
Soy bean oil, ethanol, DESIL. Engines can be designed and tune to adapt to any one of these combustible products.
As for the fuel efficiency - this is not news.
VW have a prototype a 3 cylinder diesel car (note NO battery packs or hybrid drive) that can do 100+ mpg.
Modern *European* cars with common rail injection turbo diesel engines have enough torque for sub 7 second 0-60mph times and can cruise at 70mph doing over 60mpg. YOU CAN BUY THESE CARS FROM THE SHOW ROOM NOW ! (IN EUROPE!)
Why the big deal in the USA when someone makes a car prototype that can do more than 40 mpg ?
Why aren't the major automobile companies doing this as a matter of course?
Emissions and safety standards. That's why.
How much does the car weigh? What are the specs? If a semi truck broadsides me at 50 MPH, will I live?
Hell, If the car were light enough and I could completely disregard safety, I could do the same thing with a Big Block Chevy.
I realize you're not asking the question, but perhaps there are reasons that this hasn't been developed by the big automakers.
1) Safety -- How does this vehicle perform in a crash test? Is it susceptible to rollover?
2) Maintainability -- How "cranky" is this? Sure, they won some race, but what happens @ 75k or 100k miles
(While few powertrain warranties go out to 100k miles, the EPA requires a 100k mile warranty on all emissions control equipment)
3) Emissions -- I don't believe you can buy a diesel automobile in California due to CARB regulations. While the vehicle may get 50mpg (which seems pretty ho-hum for a diesel) does it do so while emitting more particulates than allowable?
The new Audi R10 LeMans car is TDI powered and I would imagine it would do 0-6 in well under 4 seconds if geared for it. Other Golf-based TDI powered motorsport vehicles I have seen could also fit this bill. Don't think they run either of those on Soybean oil though...
is that they are legumes - and as such, they extract nitrogen from the air and return it to the soil.
What this means is, a lot of farmers that grow high-nutrient-requiring plants (corn, tomatoes, among others) use soybeans in their feild on off years to replenish the nutrients in the soil. It used to be that a lot of these plants were just tilled under the next year. Now, as the demand for soy & soy products increase, more farmers are actually harvesting them.
So I don't think that as much additional land would be needed as you fear. Soy is already rotated in to most farmlands.
and there's some hope that different sources would be better.
If I recall correctly, those better sources are the biodiesel ones you refer to. (and the numbers above are for methanol not biodiesel). Sorry, I got things messed up - my bad. Still I hope my explanation for the numbers makes sense.
Wake me when a /street legal/ car with an alternative fuel that costs within fifty cents of gasoline. I wonder how much acceleration and fuel economy came from leaving off things like airbags and other equipment the government requires the auto makers to install. I'm not saying the regulations on safety are bad, just that the article was very much out of perspective.
I also suggest that their school's economics and science curriculum be reviewed. They're 'energy' companies, not just 'oil' companies. That means that they want to develop and distribute any fuel, not just oil. If the market moved to hydrogen, ethanol, soybeans, or grass clippings, you'll see that the big investors in the production and distribution of those fuel will look awfully similar.
#-#
Ad Astra Per Aspera
A rough road leads to the stars
"If a semi truck broadsides me at 50 MPH, will I live?"
No. Most cars pritty much fly apart when an empty 6 ton semi truck broadsides the. Even those with 5 star government side impact ratings. Most accidents are fatal when the speed delta (difference of speed) goes over 35mph.
But the thing is, they are using a VW diesel engine, which I hear can easily get upwards of 50mpg anyway. They probably just added a turbo and a supercharger to get the HP up to make 60 in 4 seconds, or kept the body very very light.
I love to slaughter the english language.
...to the term "rice burner"
Like anyone can even know that
This is the dumbest post i have ever read on slashdot. Yes, in the past land has been destroyed by poor crop practices. In the west these have been all but eliminated. Farmers have become highly advanced in their protection of land to ensure they can continue to grow crops. it is patently stupid to think a farmer wouldn't ensure the nutrients on his land don't replentish themselves. Everything from crop rotation to no till plowing ensure that farm lands stay fertile and available for future generations.
Actually, the specific engine they're using is an "ALH" code TDI, which comes stock with a turbocharger and intercooler - all TDIs do.
It's out of a fourth generation Jetta TDI, IIRC. Could've been out of a Golf or New Beetle, though.
I've heard that the organizers of TDIFest are trying to get it there, FWIW.
A turbo AND a supercharger? Are your retarded? It is a turbo-charged VW diesel engine they used...
Biomass to liquid, is what the process is called.
Biodiesel. It's made of humans!
How did a passel of glittering generalities mixed with a handful of blatant falsehoods, trotted out with absolutely no supporting data, get modded +5 INSIGHTFUL?
Here on these new-fangled intarnets, we can use a crazy thing called a "hyperlink" to point to supporting data. Note how the parent post does not do so - because there isn't any!!!
Actualy, there are good reasons to use both. Use the supercharger for low rpms and use the turbo for high rpms. With both you could probably eke out around a 40-50% improvement HP wise, but you will get a drop in fuel econ tho due to more fuel being used during combustion. But diesel engines have a more efficient combustion over gasoline, so the fuel econ hit wouldnt be as bad.
I love to slaughter the english language.
While building a car like that is an amazing achievement for any young people, the hype in this article about the car, or that is critical of the auto industry, is just plain silly.
As others have pointed out, a big reason that car goes fast is likely that it is very low weight, and if those kids and their shop teacher can find better ways to cut weight without making it too expensive or sacrificing safety better than...say...Lotus engineering...well, then I'd be damned impressed.
More importantly, the soybean oil thing. It's not like car companies don't know about good deisel engines, since they sell millions of them in europe that go in passenger cars every year. And, it's not like they don't know about biodiesel either (same for the fuel industry). I do believe that biodiesel is being mixed into regular diesel products around the US right now, because from some sources it's quite cheap, and it helps emmissions. And, ignoring the problem of the minor-moderate conversion it takes to make a car biodiesel ready, there's one much bigger problem, and that's the cold weather of much of the united states. Biodiesel gels a good bit sooner than petrol diesel, making even significant mixes of it useless to large populations for a number of months out of the year.
I'm very pro-biodiesel (as long as it doesn't restrict food supply, I think fighting hunger is much more important), but it's just not going to solve many problems on it's own.
Also of note, are cars like the Opel/Vauxhall EcoSpeedster. This car was built by good ol' GM (though much of it is based on Lotus parts) a couple years ago in Europe, and it wasn't quite as fast as these kid's car (0-60 in about 5.6 if I remember correctly). The car also got about 90 miles per gallon if driven gently, and was still in the mid 30s in an endurance test of the car at 150 miles per hour (if I remember correctly, I'm too lazy to look this stuff up). That level of efficiency is MUCH better than what these kids are getting, and that shows what happens when a big company lets some of it's engineers go to town on a concept for lightweight, efficient diesel, and good aerodynamics (.22 drag coefficient! that's why it was so efficient at speed!).
Hype aside, hopefully project like what these kids made will promote ideas like biodiesel, and diesel in general, to increase awareness of these things so they can be intelligently integrated into infrastructures like the US.
you cannot dodge the quad laser. jumping is useless.
is that it is biodeisel. Biodeisel, though it can be made from soybean oil does does not have to be. Any waste cooking oil can be easily converted to biodeisel. We dont have to grow new crops of fuel plants, what we cant do is take the toxic waste that mcdonalds cant find a place to dump and convert it into fuel and food grade glycerine. Both of which have a very reasonable market value. Perhapse these kids soybean biodeisel differs in some way from mainstream biodeisel and that gives the car super powers, but i dont think it can be that far off if it is still considered biodeisel. it sounds more like the media is having fun saying "car runs on beans" than addressing the finer points of deisel design. all i know is that with the upcoming M1 batteries and the deisel-hybrid we might actually have some good cars in the future.
Why on earth would inventors of an alternative fuel source give away their intellectual property rights? Ppppffff.
Open Source is fine for hobbyists, but there are serious people in the world who want to improve their station in life by leveraging their know-how.
Leaving aside the dubious potential of this soybean-powered car, the idea of giving the invention away is more akin to "from those who can, to those who need/want/can't" than the enterprising spirit on which the most advanced nations are built.
Is to plan and build cities with dense urban cores that facilitate public transportation and walking rather than sprawling empty suburbs that require driving single-occupant vehicles to the supermarket or just about any other place. It's immensely wasteful, and directly attributable to how communities are planned.
We actually have Robert Moses to thank for much of our current addiction to oil. He was rabid about sprawl. Loved it. Bulldozed entire urban neighborhoods rich in history to build superhighways to take you out to endlessly expanding suburbs. Car companies and oil companies loved that idea and lobbied heavily for it.
Sure, we could hash through hybrids vs. biodiesel vs. solar vs. pedal power or what have you, but in the end there are simply too many people who live at points A which are too far away from points B and C. It doesn't take some incredible breakthrough in technology to fix that. Just intelligent planning.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
This is correct, and there are some vehicles out there that use both. Cars that come with twin turbochargers are based on a similar idea of using two smaller turbos instead of one large turbo because the two smaller turbos spin up and produce boost at lower engine speeds than a single larger turbo.
but you will get a drop in fuel econ tho due to more fuel being used during combustion. But diesel engines have a more efficient combustion over gasoline, so the fuel econ hit wouldnt be as bad.
Actually, you have this backwards. Forced induction (turbocharging or supercharging) makes an engine more efficient, not less. This is why virtually all large diesel engined vehicles are turbocharged or supercharged (and in a few cases, both). The turbocharger captures waste energy from the exhaust and leverages it to boost power not only by just burning more fuel, but by also raising the effective compression ratio of the engine.
Superchargers also increase the efficiency of the engine, however they suffer from mechanical losses and are not as efficient as turbochargers. The do have the benefit of being directly mechanically driven and so there is no delay before boost pressure begins to build - this makes the engine perform like a larger displacement engine, improving low RPM torque significantly.
If turbocharging actually reduced the efficiency of the diesel engine, you would not see turbochargers on long haul diesel trucks; they would simply have even larger displacement engines.
Gasoline engines also benefit from an increase in efficiency, if they can be run under boost for a significant portion of the time. Unfortunately because of the nature of how a passenger car is driven, the engine cannot be under boost a lot of the time so the turbo is usually just used for a performance boost, however there are a couple of old 1980s Buick Regals (3.8L V6 with a turbo) out there that have been carefully tuned by the owners and get almost unbelievable fuel economy on the highway (in the 40 MPG range).
Putting moderation advice in your
It must be quite exciting to have an accomplishment like a bean fuel car running like that.
Lotta work for well deserved recognition.
Hell,they deserve more.They should get to work on a 1972 Dodge Challenger R/T w/440 magnum, six pack carb,etc. They should get the honor of working on a REAL Hot Rod and get to find the top end of that.(which will be over 180 on a bad day and over 200 on a good one with good old fashioned pump fuel.More if you get liberal with the Methanol.)
Ecology and Green stuff are a fine hobby for kids to make stuff in science class and maybe give us something to shoot for in the future.It would be a bad thing to get so serious about it that we forget
the wonders we have presently(like the Dodge).
Lets shoot for 200+ mph bean fuelers.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
B.S.!
The point you are missing is that for a minority of users, its not about cost, its about cleanliness. But, this is not how you get a fuel, or anything adopted by the general public.
The general car driving public is concerned about one thing, COST.
Most /.ers have a problem in understanding how to get the general public to adopt anything:
Until people realize the Rules of General Acceptance, pet projects like Bio-Diesel, hemp, Linux, and government reform will never gain ground.
You cannot hope to change American attitudes in time to get BD accepted on the playing field you want them to accept it on, you must put BD on their playing field.
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
sorry -- netcraft hasn't confirmed it yet.
The world according to SComps
Feb. 30, 2006
So this didn't really happen?
Just junk food for thought...
I don't care what fuel it uses, I want a motorcycle that runs entirely off of my ball sweat. now that's a combustion engine!
disclaimer: I've been known to store numbers in my ass for which to dig out when quantities are required.
A grease-powered vehicle would be FAR better. We've got a huge surplus of used waste cooking oil already at hand compared to the amount of farmland it would take to produce a comparable amount of bio-diesel, and two people I know of here in Memphis run their cars almost exclusively off of grease (minus when they need to switch to petroleum diesel in order to warm the grease up in cold temperatures.) With the engine and electrical drivetrain they're using, they could potentially get far more than 50 MPG running off of waste veggie oil, plus they'd produce far less nasty pollutants - practically nil.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
A leaf only converts a small percentage of sunlight falling onto it (i forget the number but it's definitely under 2%) into stored energy. Whereas even cheap solar cells are many times more efficient. Furthermore, the leaves dont cover all the land area where the plant is. So there are more losses.
.. another thing is that a plant doesnt store all it's energy continuously .. that is .. plant starch/carbohydrates/oil aren't where 100% of the energy goes. Ultimately the land area to energy produced of a plant is like .1% efficient.
.. but cannot capture as near as much energy as a solar cell/battery combo.
..writing from memory.. but if you don't believe me please do the research yourself (DOE websites and google are a good place to start). Actually if someone collects the research into one place that would be great.
Ok, you think that is bad? Ok
My point is, plants are cheaper initial capital cost than solar cells
Now, I don't have the research references to quote for this
Hell, eating meat is 'inefficient' by the same token, so what the hell, we'll all be forced to become veggies!
I guess you don't know much about the farming industry, do you?
While the technological aspect of this isn't that remarkable (they basically converted a standard diesel engine to biodiesel and put in a light body), I'm proud to see this come out of West Philadelphia. That these castoff students reversed their fortunes and produced something impressive as a team is astounding in the face of the neglect that this side of the city has dealt with.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
However, it is possible to make biodeisel with less expensive NaOH instead of KOH, eliminating that positive byproduct.
Forget 0-60 MPH, I want to know how fast it goes 0-88 MPH!
;-)
Did these kids implement Doc Browns Flux Capacitor system? It looks like I see two of the three legs of the old/new Doc Brown design sticking out of the hood( yellow things )!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flux_capacitor
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
When they talk about building it out of scrounged parts they are talking about the conversion of the diesel/electric hybrid car that they already had over to a soy-diesel /electric hybrid car.
You can read about the previous version of the car here:
http://www.penn-partners.org/evteam/attack.htm
Also, to keep the weight down they are using a capacitor pack to power the electric engine, which means you get a very short high performance run and then the juice is gone and you are left with just the diesel engine. 1000 lbs of batteries a) would not fit in the car, b) drastically change its performance.
None of this is meant to take away from what this class has achieved, but this is not any kind of wold changing technology. Car manufacturers could easily build this car today but it would not meet safety regulations, it would be very expensive, ($75-$100K), and it has a lot of realworld shortcomings.
And as you tread the halls of sanity, You feel so glad to be, Unable to go beyond. I have a message, From another time..
Halcyon_m writes:
The system, as previously mentioned, uses a volkswagen TDI motor. It is probably has the modern share of utmost emissions control equipment on it. Also, particulates (sulfer dioxides, SOx) come from diesel found at the pumps here in the US, not the sulfer free stuff found in europe; regardless, this vehicle uses biodiesel, making it rival if not beat gasoline in emissions. For the electric powertrain, it uses one of the best designed and tested units available, the ACPropulsion converter and motor. If you look into it, it's not cheap, 40K or something, but it's 200hp and it's well built.
The CBS article is dated Feb 17th, so I believe so.
The Spoon
Updated 6/28/2011
Once oil hits the top part of 60 per barrel, it becomes more profitable to sell your organics for fuel then it does for food.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
http://evteam.gambitdesign.com/gallery/attack_buil d
Some items not mentioned in the original article.
This is a lightweight Kit Car with a VW TDI engine driving the rear wheels and an electic motor driving the front wheels. Unlikely that the electrics do anything but boost accelleration. 50MPG is not unheard of for a VW TDI without electic assist.
Neat that kids did it, but it is no surprise that if you build an ultra lightweight hybrid diesel with hybrid, that you will get great mileage/accelleration. The challenge car companies face is making the weight in the regulatory framework and still making it practical enough to own. This is all but impossible.
What we really need is some change in regulations to allow lightweight city cars to exist, so we can get great gas mileage.
While I take your point that farming extracts an ecological cost, it works pretty well if you remember to put back in what you take out. And in this case, you can put back out what you take in -- you farm, you reap, you eat, you shit, you put the shit back in the soil. Voila. Cycle begins anew.
Add another step in there by way of a fermenter, and you can generate plenty of natural gas for cooking and heating from your own toilet waste. Works best on farms with livestock, of course, as then you have plenty more raw material to throw in the fermenter. But once the shit's done farting and you've burned off all the gas coming out of that last load in the fermenter, voila. Fertilizer. See Wikipedia's biogas page:
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
From TFA:
"To Hauger, the soybean-powered car shows what kids -- any kids -- can do when they get the chance.
"If you give kids that have been stereotyped as not being able to do anything an opportunity to do something great, they'll step up," he says. "
It's not about having an opportunity or being given a chance - it's about being motivated to take advantage of an opportunity.
Just about every kid in America today is given the chance and opportunity to go to school. Sadly, many choose not to take advantage of it.
Steve
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
If the industrialized countries suddenly stopped using petroleum in the current quantities, the price would drop, which, in turn, would make it more economical for developing nations to consume more of it. Either way, the oil gets burned.
All of the economically viable petroleum reserves will get used. So, do you want nice, clean, regulated use or not? Poorer nations can't afford all the environmental rig-a-ma-role that western nations impose upon themselves.
Replacement energy sources will come when they are economically viable.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
You're correct that it isn't a revolutionary project, and that it is missing lots of things.
I've seen this car, and have browsed hundreds of on-line photos of it's construction.
The chassis and body were a kit from an eastern European country.
The chassis is setup by the manufacturer to accept commonly available junkyard suspension components. I think the whole front end (steering, etc) is from a honda accord.
The front motor is a big honkin' DC motor mated to the accord transmission.
No regenerative braking here, just a MOSFET speed control and the accord's normal brakes.
The entire rear drivetrain is a bone-stock VW TDI motor and transmission. Sure, it runs on soybean oil, but so will my VW if that's what I fill it with. No magic here, just a junkyard motor.
It's got 100+ horsepower driving each end. Of course it's fast.
It's smaller and sleeker than my Jetta which gets 50mpg using the same motor. Of course it gets good mileage.
I'm sure those kids learned a heck of a lot, and I bet they're inspired to do keep up thier schoolwork so they can do more. That's the real story.
why are these alternative fuels always spec'd in miles per gallon? i know soybeans are a sustainable resource, but i think a more important measure would be dollars per mile.
with apologies to jimmy fallon: "great, i just invented a car that runs on faberge eggs and bald-eagle heads."
so.... anyway.... how expensive is soybean oil?
free software, open standards, open file formats, no software patents.
Those stats are per person (total population), not per vehicle occupant mile. Which makes them totally meaningless for the conclusion you are trying to draw.
There are far fewer motorcylce occupant miles driven in North America than passenger car occupant miles. The vast majority of people who never ride a motorcycle have zero chance of dying while on a motorcycle, which skews the odds.
Just goes to show that if you can get the public to isolate their thinking on a few key facts in lieu of the bigger picture, you can fool and excite the general public almost every time.
why is this not modded up yet?
Beauty is truly in the eye of the tiger
Finally.....an economy car I would buy. Something with looks...AND performance. I can't figure out why so many people go for those Prius things...just so damned ugly. But, this looks great....If they had something like this in productions, I'd be a customer tomorrow.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
That $8.99 price .. does it account for all the subsidies and government grants that soy gets?
Corn, soybean, or any other food plant is a RIDICULOUS thing to start with. Making something edible takes a lot of effort/energy. Drop the silly idea of starting with a food plant.
If we REALLY want to create a biodiesal fuel plant, we need to start from the beginning: Genetically enginer a plant that makes the perfect fuel, not take a food plant and change it to make a fuel.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
If you think about it, its not big corporations that always invent life changing techonologies.
Did Ford revolutionize mass manufactoring by working at a big company? Did Robert Goddard make his start in rockets for a big corporation? Did the PC, spreadsheets and wordprocessors start in big congoolmerates? If I remember my history right, these all started by an individual, in his "garage" (so to speak).
will it still get 50mpg when you're carrying a stereo system, 5 upholstered seats and seat belts, vehicle lining and padding, engine/brake management systems, windshield washers + water, power steering systems, a spare wheel? and will it still do 0-60 in 4 seconds when you add all that? what we should be seeing here is bhp, engine torque:consumption.
Er, you are aware that Kyoto came out during the Clinton administration, aren't you? And that he never submitted it to the Senate for approval?
All Bush did was admit that the US Senate was never going to approve that treaty (which they weren't), and quit pretending otherwise.
The teacher could actually use the question of "why the big automakers don't do this" as a learning tool for the students rather than having them assume "it is because they are big greedy corporations." I am sure slashdotter's could come up with at least a hundred different reasons.
..does it tast like a real Camero with Cheese?
Exactly. If you've really got video proof of this crap going on, post it to Google Video, Yahoo Video, or something similar. There are also plenty of sites that'll host your video, and post it to a single page with 2-3 banner ads around it.
I agree. "The news wouldn't cover it" isn't an excuse anymore. And I'll be more than happy to spread the word if there's proof.
Interesting.... sounds a lot like this vehicle by San Diego State University Department of Mechanical Engineering HEV (hybrid electric vehicle) Team.
It also uses a AC Propulsions electric motor (200hp) (which is what the kids used) and a Volkswagon turbo-charged direct-injection diesel engine.
The SDSU site goes into great detail about other engine considerations and why they decided on what they chose based on scientific data and research.
The Internet Archive shows the site has been http://www.engineering.sdsu.edu/~hev/index.htm">ma inly unchanged since 2000, long before the kids started their project in 2003.
Did the kids give any credit to San Diego State University for pretty much stealing their entire concept?
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
I don't want to poop on the accomplishment of these kids -- it's really groovy-cool what they did -- but it's worth pointing out a potential answer to the question "why aren't the manufacturers doing it?"
It's simple, really; if you have a fixed amount of power and you want better speed and gas mileage, reduce weight. The same engine powers a Toyota MR2 Spyder to a high-seven-second 0-60 time and a Lotus Elise to a low-six-second 0-60 time; the Lotus is significantly lighter.
Manufacturers can't reduce weight like someone making a one-off or prototype can; manufacturers need crash protection and air bags, and their cars also need to last a lot longer in day-to-day use. Expecting manufacturers to equal this achievement in a production-ready and street-legal configuration is asking too much.
Manufacturers aren't doing it because they're still making money off the oil they continue to suck. Unfortunatly I don't think any major automobile manufacturer will make a car run on anything other than oil until the oil is gone. Then it'll be like, "Oh shit, it ran out? Guess we'll have to think of some other natural resource to bun." I like the idea of hydrogen powered cars. If I can fill up my car with tap water, damn that'd be nice!
=*^.^*=
Fuck! I hope nobody told bushey about this yet, thems some dead ass kids!
Windows has more viruses because linux has more virus coders.
But modern diesel cars do take a conversion because they need to have synthetic tubing.
France (among other countries) has required a fraction of all diesel sold to have biodiesel since about 1993, so any company selling cars there has already been using synthetic tubing. (That would be most of them, including both companies that sell diesel cars in the USA.)
If you consider "modern diesel cars" to mean "cars older than 1993", well, you have a strange definition of "modern".
most of the acceleration comes from the electric motor I suspect, just as it does with most other hybrids.
What makes you think this is a hybrid? TFA doesn't say this is a hybrid.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
There are alot of posts that kind of crap on this project. Yeah yeah....it's not really revolutionary or new but let's look at who we had doing the project.....inner city high school students with help of Penn. U as well. To me, this is an amazing project and I don't care what they hell anyone says. I am proud of these kids. They have done something extraordinary for a group of high school students. Eventually, we'll have to do something like this and I am simply amazed.
Gorkman
The real questions are:
1) Do the dumbies running the Philadelphia Public School System have a technology transfer and marketing policy?
2) If it does, how will the local corrupt, partially indicted, and marching off to jail local Democratic administration of Mayor John Street manage to waste this resource, too?
Last year, the leader/principal of the high school tried to eliminate the auto development program; not believing minority students could captialize on a chance to compete.
What a shame. There are many more talented kids, here in Philly, deserving of a chance to compete.
It's not a full hybrid, but it still has the electric motor.
(Actually, if the motor can be in any way charged from the TDI engine, it's a hybrid, although a hybrid diesel without regenerative braking is kind of pointless except for the insane acceleration from having a 200 HP electric motor added to a 200 HP traditional engine. 90% of the benefits of converting a diesel vehicle to be a hybrid would be from regenrative braking.)
BTW, to those who don't know - While the power output of internal combustion engines is proportional to RPM (to a point, at the extreme low and high RPM regions torque suffers, which also reduces power.), the power capability of an electric motor is essentially fixed. An ideal electric motor at 0 RPM will have infinite torque. In reality, the torque is not inifinite, but is extremely high.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
The car is based on a kit car from: http://www.k-1attack.com/
The car uses a 200 VW 1.9L TDi engine powering the rear wheels.
It also has an unknown (to me, anyway) electric motor for the front wheels.
Here are some links for it:
The school's "photo blog" http://evteam.gambitdesign.com/gallery/albums.php
A write-up from last fall: http://www.autoblog.com/2005/08/15/hybrid-attack/
a hybrid diesel without regenerative braking is kind of pointless except for the insane acceleration from having a 200 HP electric motor added to a 200 HP traditional engine.
TFA does not mention an electric motor, let alone a 200 HP electric motor. Where are you getting this stuff?
That that is is that that that that is not is not.