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Kids Build Soybean Fueled Sports Car

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the why-give-up-a-cash-cow dept.

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."

1 of 558 comments (clear)

  1. Re:cost of fuel by sumdumass · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Trying to run the world off soybeans is an invitation to slash and burn the rain forest for farmland and kill everything in the rivers with fertilizer.
    We don't need to run the world off of soybeans. We just need to release a presence of it enough to bring other fuel costs down.

    It is a "glue" until alternative means (solar,nuclear,hydrogen,whatever..) can be built into the econemy. If we were to go completley (fossil)oil free today, there are so many cars and other machines that would be useless our econemy and possibly civilization would colapse. Soy oil and ethyl alcohols could keep these machines going until we can replace them with differently fueled vehicle or machines. The average car will last around 15+ years. After about 5 the first owner usualy gets rid of it and it changes hands until some poor sap gets it and it is the best they can afford and the cycle continues. After about 25 years, the car is probably scraped, recycled or preserved in some fasion were the transition from one type fuel to another totaly non dependent oil could be resonably done.

    One of the most interesting parts of this article is the mention of sportscar and 50 mpg in the same sentence. Most if not all production diesel (soy bean oil's substitute)powered cars get less then 46 mpg. Some don't even get 25mpg if you count the trucks. Diesel fuel is said to have a higher amount of stored energy and is considered more efficient then soy oil. This same system getting 50mpg in soy might lend diesel fueled car the ability to get 60+mpg while still retaining performance.