For under $30,000, you will soon be able to buy an electric car with a 120 mile range, or a plug-in hybrid that gets 300 miles-per-gallon.
Sound like a fantasy, but this one could be coming to a dealer near you. Slated for release in late 2008, the company Aptera will be offering the initial limited release of their fully electric model Aptera Typ1, and the 300 mpg plug-in will follow in 2009.
Trying to learn how to make biodiesel, or interested in seeing how it’s done? It always helps to get a visual, and you may not be aware that there are currently enough biodiesel videos on YouTube to develop an entire college course on the subject. I’ve thrown out a representative sample, just to give you an idea of what’s available.
You’ll notice a lot of these videos utilize a homemade biodiesel reactor called the “appleseed” reactor. This is the simplest and cheapest way to build a biodiesel processing facility in your garage. The plans for it can be found here.
I can’t believe his mother lets him do this in the kitchen, and where are his gloves?! (I have a particular affiliation for the video, though, since I had the same old truck.)
I don’t know if this is truly a step forward in clean car technology, or just something for James Bond and Aquaman fans, but Swiss car maker Rinspeed will debut the sQuba, a fully submersible electric car, at next month’s Geneva Auto Show.
If a picture is worth a thousand words, a good documentary can change your vocabulary.
Josh Tickell’s new film,Fields of Fuel, has just won the Audience Award for Documentary at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival. The film, which opened last Monday to a standing ovation, is a sharp, compelling look at biofuels and the history of America’s dependence on foreign oil. From home-made biodiesel to OPEC corruption, it covers the myriad reasons why we should be changing our fuel to change our lives.
Last week I was interviewed by Timber Talk, a forestry radio station in Arkansas, which coincidentally took place at the North American International Auto show in Detroit, Michigan. Timber Talk approached me last fall after reading a post on VegTruck.com that dealt with using straight vegetable oil as a fuel source.
Fun fact: Timber Talk radio covers a population of 2,400,000 in three states.
We spoke for about 30 minutes on a range of topics, including the new renewable fuel standard, cellulosic ethanol and GM’s announcement, algae biodiesel, vegetable oil as a fuel, and so on.
Chevron Corp. is accelerating its research into biofuel derived from algae. On Tuesday, Solazyme Inc. of South San Francisco announced an agreement with the Chevron subsidiary Chevron Technology Ventures to develop and test biodiesel feedstock made from algae.
The partnership will almost certainly rev up Solazyme’s production and research process, as will GM’s backing of Coskata ethanol. But I still have no information on how the algae will be grown. I’m getting the sense that this is almost cellulosic + algae = biodiesel, since these guys are talking about getting sugar from corn stover, switchgrass, wood chips, and sugarcane, then feeding it to algae to boost production. Take a look at this video from the film: Read the rest of this entry »
Last week at the Auto Show, I had the opportunity to be interviewed for a few short online video segments by coBRANDiT. My interview made it into a few different clips, including the Coskata biofuel announcement. Take a look at the following videos:
Matt Kelly of NextGear was kind enough to pass along video of our breakfast with Rick Wagoner, Chairman and CEO of General Motors, which took place last week at the NAIAS.
I’m here in a bitterly cold Park City, Utah, for the 2008 Sundance Film Festival. Current temperature outside is 5, and the night before last registered at a polar -10 degrees F.
But hey, I’m at Sundance.
For the next ten days I’ll be on the lookout for films and panels pertaining to biofuels or the planet. It looks like Josh Tickell, the well-known author of From the Fryer to the Fuel Tank (who’s primarily responsible for the biodiesel homebrew movement in the last decade) has a film this year. It’s called Fields of Fuel.
I’ll also be collaborating with a colleague here to finish a short documentary we filmed last year called Veggie Truck. If it isn’t totally embarrassing (I haven’t watched the footage in almost a year) I’ll be posting it here.
Until then, I’ll be watching movies and fighting off frostbite.
All that green pond scum I used to avoid could well produce enough fuel to satisfy all the energy needs in the United States. That’s a pretty far out statement, but Glen Kertz, CEO of Valcent Products made it very clear that a process of growing algae vertically is capable of producing huge amounts of alternative fuels. It’s being proven today in Texas.
This is one fascinating story, with a link below showing the process and an explanation by Mr. Kertz.
Valcent has partnered with Global Green Solutions to develop a production test project in El Paso, TX. After 90 days of continual production, algae was being harvested at an average of one gram per liter from the Vertigro Bio-Reactor System. Based on those results, the joint venture partners believe their system would deliver about 33,000 gallons of algae oil per acre per year. By comparison, soybean oil produces about 49 gallons of oil per acre each year, and palm oil would yield about 630 acres of oil a year. Read the rest of this entry »
Gas 2.0 digs into the viscous world of biofuels and the fast-paced transit arena, exploring the technologies and substances that are the future of transportation.
Trying to learn how to make 
Last week I was interviewed by 
It’s been a big week for biofuel breakthroughs and new partnerships. While photographing the 
I’m here in a bitterly cold Park City, Utah, for the 2008 Sundance Film Festival. Current temperature outside is 5, and the night before last registered at a polar -10 degrees F.
