Friday, January 04, 2008

Motorhead Messiah - Fuel Efficient Cars - Biodiesel - Hybrids

Motorhead Messiah - Fuel Efficient Cars - Biodiesel - Hybrids: "For his part, Goodwin argues he's merely 'a problem solver. Most people try to make things more complicated than they are.' He speaks of the major carmakers with a sort of mild disdain: If he can piece together cleaner vehicles out of existing GM parts and a bit of hot-rod elbow grease, why can't they bake that kind of ingenuity into their production lines? Prod him enough on the subject and his mellowness peels away, revealing a guy fired by an almost manic frustration. 'Everybody should be driving a plug-in vehicle right now,' he complains, in one of his laconic engineering lectures, as we wander through the blistering Kansas heat to a nearby Mexican restaurant. 'I can go next door to Ace Hardware and buy a DC electric motor, go out to my four-wheel-drive truck, remove the transmission and engine, bolt the electric motor onto the back of the transfer case, put a series of lead-acid batteries up to 240 volts in the back of the bed, and we're good to go. I guarantee you I could drive all around town and do whatever I need, go home at night, and hook up a couple of battery chargers, plug one into an outlet, and be good to go the next day."

Cool. Thinking inside, outside and around the box.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Production of hydrogen need not be made from natural gas. High school students make hydrogen in chemistry class with water (non-potable will work) and electricity. Using wind or solar power for the process keeps the production clean. As to a distribution system for hydrogen, every service station will be able to make their own.
25 years ago my uncle did this very thing. He used a farm windmill to create hydrogen from his lake. He drove his converted hydrogen vehicle for years, albeit only within range of home. Why has someone not looked at this with our current energy crisis?