Kids Build Soybean-Fueled Car: 0-60 in 4 sec and 50 mpg!

link

(CBS) The star at last week's Philadelphia Auto Show wasn't a sports car or an economy car. It was a sports-economy car — one that combines performance and practicality under one hood.

But as CBS News correspondent Steve Hartman reports in this week's Assignment America, the car that buyers have been waiting decades comes from an unexpected source and runs on soybean bio-diesel fuel to boot.

A car that can go from zero to 60 in four seconds and get more than 50 miles to the gallon would be enough to pique any driver's interest. So who do we have to thank for it. Ford? GM? Toyota? No — just Victor, David, Cheeseborough, Bruce, and Kosi, five kids from the auto shop program at West Philadelphia High School

The five kids, along with a handful of schoolmates, built the soybean-fueled car as an after-school project. It took them more than a year — rummaging for parts, configuring wires and learning as they went. As teacher Simon Hauger notes, these kids weren't exactly the cream of the academic crop.

Wowza, and kill it if it's a repost, since this is from February.

But damn, this is just nutz! I'd imagine if they can make a car that powerful with 50 mpg, hell, the rest of the world will be glad to settle on one that does 0-60 in 7 seconds or more and gets 70 MPG!

But as usual, there are probably issues with it...like ahh, where in the heck you gonna get soybean fuel?

I dunno, but looks like FORD is catching on! - sort of
Ford plans 'recycled' car using soy beans

[edit on 16-3-2006 by TrueAmerican]

The reason its not happening is explained in the article.

"We made this work," says Hauger. "We're not geniuses. So why aren't they doing it?"

Kosi thinks he knows why. The answer, he says, is the big oil companies.

"They're making billions upon billions of dollars," he says. "And when this car sells, that'll go down — to low billions upon billions."

[edit on 16/3/06 by byhiniur]

This was covered in the peak oil forum over a week ago:

Oil Alternative

Awe, just as I was all giddy bout this one, and even went to the trouble of getting screenie, cropping it, and uploading the pic to our site here.

But ok, if the mods must... But hey, this really should be in this forum, and not in peak oil! I think?

who owns and controls the oil companies controls the world and who would they be?

amazing that floors of engineers in auto companies can't compete with 'sweathog' kids at the local high school!

what other lies are they telling us for example? that nuclear fusion is impossible?

or that going to mars is too difficult?