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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."
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.
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)
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.
If the "50 mpg" estimate is based on actual real life road testing, rather than the artificially inflated numbers that hybrid cars carry, it's not that bad. This is roughly twice the mileage that most cars get, so either soybean oil would have to drop to "price of gas times 2" or the price of gas would have to rise to "price of soybean oil divided by 2". I rather think that both will happen, both because of economies of scale and because soybean oil is a renewable resource whereas petroleum isn't.
Now I also wonder what the emissions are like on these things... That is after all the other big concern.
Not really. The main reason that burning fossil fuels is bad for the environment is that the CO2 that's released during combustion has been locked in the earth in the form of petroleum for millions of years. It hasn't been a part of our ecosystem for a very long time, so burning fossil fuels actually constitutes a net increase in CO2. Burning soybean oil, on the other hand, may release CO2 and other harmful gases, but the point is that the CO2 released was scrubbed out of the atmosphere by the soybean plant when it was growing.
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.
I don't think it's so much the cost that's an issue, but the fact that it is renewable. Far more so than petrol products, by my understanding.
that sounds just wonderful. off you go. bye :)
This is why if the USA is going to produce biodiesel on a large scale, it cannot rely on plants such as corn, peanuts, soybeans, sugar cane/beet, or plant waste.
The best solution is to use oil-laden algae, which can create biodiesel fuel and heating oil several hundred times more on a per pound basis than from plant sources. A company called GreenFuel Technologies is looking at using the exhaust emissions from coal-fired and natural gas-fired plants to "feed" vertical tubes of oil-laden algae, which can grow these algae at very fast rates. Also, the "waste" from the processing can be used to make animal feed, plant fertilizer and/or ethanol fuel!