FUEL Filmmakers Unveil World's First Algae-Fueled, 150 MPG Car (VIDEO)
Did you know that the diesel engine was originally invented to run on vegetable oil? Or that ethanol was the preferred fuel for Henry Ford's Model T? (That is, until John D. Rockefeller of Standard Oil conveniently supported a little amendment to the Constitution known as Prohibition, which effectively outlawed the sale of alcohol-based fuels along with gin martinis.)
Unbelievably, I didn't. Learning about these two forgotten pieces of history blew my mind when I first watched the film Fuel, which won the Best Documentary Audience Award at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival. But the movie, which took filmmaker and environmentalist Josh Tickell 11 years to complete, isn't only about the history of oil, the substance that has come to dominate nearly every function of modern life; it's also about the real sustainable energy solutions that are within our reach. This is a film that will change the world, if only people see it.
It's with this goal in mind that Tickell, one of the leaders in the US biofuels movement, and his fiance/producer Rebecca Harrell have decided to take their Veggie Van Organization on a cross-country tour to promote Fuel, as well as make available a free 35-minute educational version of the film to every school in the US. The tour, which launches today in San Francisco, includes a caravan of green fuel vehicles, like a biodiesel/solar-powered bus that's been converted into a mobile educational lab for students, and the Algaeus (get it?), the world's first algae-fueled, 150 mpg, plug-in-electric hybrid vehicle.
I met with Tickell and Harrell Monday in Los Angeles as they and the rest of the Fuel team raced to add the finishing touches to the Veggie Van fleet. Take a look:
Josh Tickell will be vlogging from the Veggie Van for HuffPost Green during his cross-country trip.
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Waste BioChar can supply all the fuels we need, carbon negative and forever. While cleaning up our wastes.
Sorry not the first car - this company did it back in May 2008, also last year they flew an airship using algae fuel. They will probably be the first company to fully patent this process.
Here is a link to the Web site with video from a bio-algae oil to green
fuel demonstration on Monday 5-19-2008. They use the fuel in a diesel
vehicle demonstration.
http://alg
We had the fuel tested, if you would like more information I can be contacted at bellsouth.
I really hate to rain on anyone elses parade, but condor101 my electric grid is a city municipality who
supplies electric to the town grid via a coal fired plant.....
i dream of a small re-chargab
gas stations on every corner with a battery changing station on every corner. the station re-charges
the batteries, and the consumer would pay for the original battery and then a re-charging fee every swap out. of
course the cars would have to be designed to make the whole process super easy so even a grannie like me could
handle the swap out. and think of the kids that could be employed swapping/r
windows like the old days.
ding ding - ding ding
The solution is there. Aptera.com with it's hybrid plug-in 230+ miles vehicle.
Also, if you own a home, a recent article described that solar panels are 1/2 in price than a year ago.
If you don't act and make choices, then you will end up just being a continued consumer of coal and oil.
Check out this article on BetterPlace and how this is possible.
http://www
Go Fuel Film! I think electric cars are the answer, but biofuel (especially from algae) is a great additional resource on the path to solar cars. http://www
The demo bus and veggie van are fantastic at raising awareness of all alternative fuels. Kudos!
We have lots of diesel trucks that could use hemp diesel.
Plant hemp on the median strips and flood plains.
Replace half the corn and soy with hemp
and we will have a gazzilion gallons of hemp oil.
Plug in electric is BEST alternative.
Go to the website below for the Best solution..
http://www
Thanks,will put this link on my website.
The biofuels movement is a distraction technique, funded by Oil companies.
True electric vehicles are the present and future. Aptera has produced a vehicle that gets 100+ miles per charge.
People are fed up with buying fuel, whether from oil or in the future, algae.
I want gas stations to go away.
Plug-in electric vehicles are the present and future.
Solar and Wind Turbine Energies can power the energy needs of plug-in electric vehicles. It's a proven fact that electric vehicles use much less energy than gas engines.
There are a lot of trolls for the oil and gas companies here, spreading their lies.
(continued below)
The price of solar panels are going down faster every month. People should place solar panels on their homes and get off the grid. Small wind turbines are already available and make a lot of free energy.
Studies have been done which show that charging up a PHEV from a grid powered by a coal power station results in about a 2/3 reduction in generated air pollution, including CO2. Of course, if the power station is one that is cleaner than coal, all the better.
Solar and Wind Turbine energies are the Best solutions for our planet. We can produce a great deal of free energy from the sun and wind if we place solar panels and small wind turbines on homes and use plug-in electric vehicles.
For more info go to http://www
www.aptera
http://www
Any article on bio fuels, or hydrogen fuels, etc...are just to distract people away from 100% plug-in electric vehicles.
Shame on the producers of this film.
Posters on this thread have attacked me with names, because they are cowards and it's easier to attack the messenger. They cannot refute or disprove my message or statements of Facts.
I don't think the producer has ulterior motives here. He started doing this vegetable oil van thing in like 1997. One of the vehicles they use is a plug-in hybrid. Anyway, we have a fleet of combustion engine vehicles. The new vehicles can and should be plug-ins, but smart having a stepping stone for the existing fleet. If a oil tax drove traditional gasoline up, algae gasoline would be competitive (assuming innovation and economies of scale don't drive it down). Then we're releasing CO2 that was captured last week, instead of last ice age.
"Stepping stones' are for people who expect a tax on gas will force people to use alternative fuels. Just plain dumb.
The debate is over. PHEV's are the best method to reduce CO2 emissions.
Films like this just cloud the B.S. that bio fuels are the next best option, which is utter non-sense.
If this Film was about a conversion of their van with Li-Ion batteries and they get 100+ miles per charge, like the Aptera....
Unfortunately, it's a propaganda piece just to keep people thinking only about liquid fuels and to keep buying this stuff at gas stations.
These people will all get 'disappeared' by the Oil Powers That Be. When they finally come out with one that runs on garbage like the vehicle in Back to the Future, those people better be put under 24 hour guard.
Would be pretty awesome if they authorized funds to build/retrofit 1000 of these busses, and sent them to every state, to act as traveling classrooms, visiting every school.
Roughly 125,000 elementary & secondary schools. Just visiting one school per day, every school could be visited in 125 days (factor in a chunk of the fleet being out of service, could still do it in 150 days.) Course they could be a lot cooler and have labs set up everywhere too, make it a science class fair.
Say a used bus costs $50k, salary the driver/educator at $40k (even hire local school bus drivers to do the driving, $20k for fuel and repairs.. times 1000 busses, comes to $120 million (nearly half as much every year after.)
What is that, the cost of 40 bradley fighting vehicles? (or 20 each year after)
You could fund this whole thing for four years, for the cost of a single F-22 fighter jet.
Not saying this bus is that spectacular, but for a tiny chunk of money, you could seriously inject science into the lives of every school child. Staff them with recent B.S. & B.A. Education degree recipients, working on an Americorps programs, and you could have four staff members per bus. I guarantee you we could find some of the best science and education majors, fresh out of college, willing to volunteer/intern their time for 6 mos or a year doing cool science demonstrations in their state. That's to say nothing of the retired scientists and educators who would be willing to as well. An online thing for it would allow local volunteers to meet and prepare on their own, easily. internet could also be used to for educators to access weeks worth of lesson plans and materials in anticipation of the seminar day. When a bus rolls into a new town, the volunteers have been in contact for months preparing and learning everything. The kids have spent a couple weeks watching videos learning how it all works, so when it gets there, they are doing hands on learning, not just getting a short lecture.
It's great, assuming they can prove that algae gasoline is near the cost of regular gasoline, or will be approaching it in the future if you factor in economies of scale & expected innovation in algae (that double oil molecule algae?)
That makes too much sense. Who'd pay for it? Certainly NOT Corporately owned Washington.
$200 average fee per school (on a sliding scale -- a great deal considering the weeks of lesson material) = $25 million annually
Collect a few million from auto manufacturers, maybe $10 mill total.
Grant from from Annenberg and similar foundations, $5 mill?
That's like, $85 mlll total remaining cost for the first year. $25 mill to run it every year after.
Pocket change here in D.C....
It'd be easier to do if it was a private non-profit, and was just funded by federal and state grants, rather than getting Congress to expand govt to operate it. $25 mill can be earmarked into a bill pretty easily.
Denatured alcohol and ethanol was still completely legal to sell during Prohibition. It did suffer during the 20s because it wasn't profitable, and distillers went out of business after they lost their most profitable line of business, but it was never at any point major competitor to big oil. If it had been, it seems that countries with few oil resources would have adapted it whole-heartedly, yet countries like Germany relied mostly on coal gassification during WWII as an alternative to oil.
Prohibition was the culmination of a century-old temperance movement (in both North America and Northern Europe) that slowly because more and more prohibitionist in the late 19th century. It needed little help from corporate interests. Standard Oil had already been broken up by that time anyway.
awesome!
As long as we continue to have a need for liquid fuels, finding ways to minimise the impact of using them will be wise policy.
Studies have been done which show that charging up a PHEV from a grid powered by a coal power station results in about a 2/3 reduction in generated air pollution, including CO2. Of course, if the power station is one that is cleaner than coal, all the better.
New technologies are online to produce liquid fuels from excess foodstock and non foodstock. Economically turning green "waste" into liquid fuel may be much more productive than dumping the waste in landfills or burning it, helps the environment as well and the economy, and can be good for the national balance of payments.
I have an algae car but the frogs keep plugging up my fuel filter. :P....GO GREEN!!!
In the news of the future!
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The first person arrested for illegal algae skimming from decorative ponds in housing developments pleads not guilty.
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Posish!
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R/ PRONESE
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