Green Options » air car

6 Alternative-Fuel Vehicles Built By Teenagers

Jerry James Stone — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 19:24:57 +0000

Car companies like Tesla, Toyota and Nissan are all scrambling for a piece of the EV market. Heck, even cities like San Francisco and Portland want some. But they all just got pwned by these kids. These vehicles run on everything from solar to soy!

Texas Teen Buys Car Off eBay, Makes It Electric

Luke Laborde turned a 32 mpg gas-burning Bradley GT II kit car into a fully electric ride for just about $10,000. The ride, which was purchased off eBay, has eight 80-pound batteries throughout including where the gas tank used to be. The car gets 40 miles on a full charge.

Student Built Race Car Is Powered By Soybeans

Five kids from West Philly’s high school auto shop class, ex-gang members and high school dropouts built this soybean-powered race car. The car gets 50+ mpg and goes from 0 to 60 in just 4 seconds! But the real win here is how the experience impacted these kids. One of the few still in high school, Kosi Harmon, went from getting D’s to being a straight-A student.

8th Grader Builds Solar-Powered Bike With GPS, iPod Dock

Eighth-grader David S. Dixon built this street-legal quadricycle powered by a solar-charged electric motor. The bike not only carries his dog and three friends, but it has also has an iPod dock and GPS. Ya, it’s that cool!

16 Year Old Converts 1988 Mazda Truck To A Plugin EV

Andrew Angelloti, after saving up $6,000 as a part time lifeguard, converted his very own truck to be a plug-in. Using 20 flooded lead acid batteries to create 120 volts and a 60 HP electric motor, the truck hits a top speed of 55 mph and has range of 40 miles. Best part, he blogs about it so others can mod their cars. You can check out his blog here.

15 Year Old Builds Air-Powered Ride Back In 1989

This air-powered car was covered by KODE Channel 12 of Joplin, MO back in 1989. You can tell by VHS-to-YouTube quality of the video. The idea was pitched to car companies but largely ignored.

Alaskan Teen Converts 1971 VW Super Beetle To Electric Car

While some VW enthusiasts are still waiting for the car company to tap the electric car market (one of those being me), senior Bart Grabman has beat them to the punch. Whether or not Bart can see Russia from his house, he has my vote! Though…can I get mine in one of these?

A Year of Reddit: Gas 2.0’s Ten Most Redd Stories of 2008

Nick Chambers — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 17:59:34 +0000

Editor’s note: This week we’re serving up the first ever year end best-of Gas 2.0 series with our most Dugg, most up-voted reddit, most Stumbled, and most viewed stories of 2008. As a special bonus, we’ll finish off the week by handing out the first ever (yet sure to be highly coveted) Gas 2.0 Post of the Year Award.

Ah, reddit. In many ways the cute little bugger is the forgotten genius brother to Digg, and, no matter how hard he tries, his smartness can’t seem to shine above Digg’s trophy-winning varsity jock prowess (if you hung out in the periodical room in high school, you know what I mean). But perhaps this is for the best, because what we’re left with is what civil commentary can look like on the internet when it’s dominated by graduate students, scientists, know-it-alls, and the generally reserved.

And as it turns out, all of those folks enjoy reading Gas 2.0. So, without further adieu:

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Magnetic Air Car Could Be Ready by 2010

Ariel Schwartz — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 01:01:25 +0000

Last week, I took a trip down to San Jose for West Coast Green, an environmentally-focused conference with an emphasis on sustainable building. One booth stood out from the crowd—Magnetic Air Cars, Inc.. The San Jose-based company claims that it is working on the world’s first fuel-less car (as opposed to the World’s Most Fuel Efficient Car).

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Air Cars vs. Electric Cars vs. Hybrids - Which are Greener?

Dana Nuccitelli — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 00:43:14 +0000

An ‘air car’ sure sounds clean. A car that runs on air? What’s cleaner than that? But of course it’s not quite that simple.

The world’s first commercial air car is currently being produced by India’s largest automaker, Tata Motors, who is licensing the technology from European-based company MDI. A compressed-air car uses the force of super-compressed air to move the engine’s pistons up and down, as opposed to explosions produced from injecting a small amount of fuel. At higher speeds the engine will burn a small amount of fuel to create more compressed air, sort of like how a plug-in hybrid like the Chevy Volt produces on-the-fly electricity. The hybrid air-car setup should be able use any number of fuels, including gasoline, propane, or ethanol.

So now that we’ve established how the Air Car will work, how green is it?

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An Air Car You Could See in 2009: ZPM’s 106 MPG Compressed-Air Hybrid

Clayton B. Cornell — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 22:41:04 +0000

Compressed-Air Powered cars could take you over 800 miles on a single fill-up, at speeds of up to 96 mph. They should refuel in less than 3 minutes, and at speeds over 35 mph emit about half the CO2 of a Toyota Prius. Best part? You could see them in the US at the end of next year.

Car-tech aficionados may already be familiar with Zero Pollution Motor’s (ZPM) compressed-air powered car. For those that haven’t heard of it yet, read on:

“The compressed air vehicle is a new generation of vehicle that finally solves the motorist’s dilemma: how to drive and not pollute at a cost that is affordable!”

What happens when you replace the explosions in your car’s combustion chamber with clean compressed air? Well, as long as you lighten things up by replacing heavier parts with aluminum, you end up with a clean, efficient way to power a vehicle.

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