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

[buddleia]

That's really cool, but this: "They could do all this stuff if they wanted to," he tells me, slapping on a visor and hunching over an arc welder. "The technology has been there forever. They make 90% of the components I use." enraged me like almost nothing else could.

And Dean? Would interpose his own body if anyone tried that on his baby.

[brown_betty]

That's really cool, but this: "They could do all this stuff if they wanted to," he tells me, slapping on a visor and hunching over an arc welder. "The technology has been there forever. They make 90% of the components I use." enraged me like almost nothing else could.

Yeah. My mom's a total hippie, and I was raised with the gospel truth that car companies are actively buying patents for technologies that might be environmentally beneficial, in order to suppress them.

[rivkat]

800 HP makes up for a lot of french fries. Also, you've got to think that Dean likes the smell of french fries.

[brown_betty]

Mmm, true. "Ahh, smells like home." "And by home, you mean that Diner in Nebraska that was closed for health violations." "Yeah, and?"

[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

[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.