Demons, yes, fuel emissions, no.

[brown_betty]

Goodwin's feats of engineering have become gradually more visible over the past year. Last summer, Imperium Renewables contacted MTV's show Pimp My Ride about creating an Earth Day special in which Goodwin would convert a muscle car to run on biodiesel. The show chose a '65 Chevy Impala, and when the conversion was done, he'd doubled its mileage to

Comments

[hradzka]

Pound for pound, diesel offers more power and torque; it's also inherently more efficient, offering up to 40% better mileage and 20% lower emissions in engines of comparable size.

This strikes me as odd: according to Edmunds, emissions requirements strongly restrict the sale of new diesel cars in New York, Maine, Massachusetts, Vermont, and California, which I think of as pretty green-oriented states. If the emissions are lower than regular gasoline, they wouldn't have a hard time passing. Various companies are working on these problems -- Honda seems to have made the best strides, and Volkswagen has done some good stuff in Europe with its Polo -- but the new tech diesel engines are expensive. The biggest problem, it seems, is the trade-off between mileage and emission standards -- tougher US emission standards are apparently the reason Smart's American fortwo will get worse mileage than its European cousin.

That said, Goodwin's plan about the transition to a biodiesel system actually sounds semi-plausible -- I don't know if it would work, but he makes it sound like it could.

[brown_betty]

I have no idea about the relative efficiency and cleanliness of diesel; but here's the video of the Lamborghini/Impala face off, and the Lamborghini totally gets smoked! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snaJHZEervc

Which is to say, I am easily distracted by the shiny.