Eco friendly cars

Kind of old news but I meet some friends who didn’t knew about this.
I’m talking about the solar taxi . Louis Palmer, the inventor of the solar taxi, did a trip around the world using no oil, just electricity form the solar panel of his car.
53451 km,  534 days, 40 countries  during his journey.

The car reached about 55 mph and travel about 200 miles per charge. More details on http://www.solartaxi.com/ .

Luis Palmer plans to do another trip around the world, this time with 6 vehicles in 80 days, using hydro, geothermal and wind energy.

Belgian Xavier Van der Stappen will drive his “Veah” on the Paris-Dakar No Oil Race. Veah (Véhicule Electrique à Assistance Humaine) is electric car/bicycle invented by the belgian, realised all by ecologic materials. It has pedals, a horn and a battery which need to be recharged at 2 hours.

Van der Stappen hopes to make those 6000 km Paris-Dakar in 3 months. Iam really curios how this car will go throug the sand:)

The brown waste grease, known as FOG (fat, oil and grease) of San Francisco  will be converted into biofuel with a $1.2 million worth state and federal grants. BlackGold Biofuels and engineering firm URS Corp are going to do this, recycle the waste formed by oil, grease and used cooking fat.

Half of all San Francisco’s sewer emergencies are caused by grease blockages and cost the city $3.5 million a year in cleanings.

80 buses in Oslo, Norway will be modified (minor modifications) to use biomethane obtained from raw sewage. Two sewage plants in Oslo will be adapted to convert the sewage in biomethane.

Each bus will save 40 tons of carbon dioxide every year.  If this experiment will be a succes, all 400 buses from Oslo will be converted.

Oslo is trying to be the most ecological capital in the world, the target is 0 emissions of carbon dioxide by year 2050.

125 cars are running on a mix of diesel and vegetable oil in Westchester County in Upstate New York.  Another 7 cars are running exclusively on vegetable oil.

The county saves $25.000 for every 10,000 gallons of cooking oil. Restaurant owners are very excited and willing to participate to this program, because it saves them from paying money to have the used oil hauled away.

The county plan to convert another 350 vehicles, at least as a mix.

$4500 costs to convert a car to use just vegetable oil, and $1000 a system that process the  oil.