The Future is Now

by Team Greasecar

Greasecar has an immediately available alternative to oil.
It is difficult to imagine a utopia of transportation where internal combustion vehicles are found, or any vehicles made of a rigid metal shell and frame. In a Greasecar utopian society, we hope people will use the currently unknown power of the mind to hover from place to place as a form of transportation.

Unfortunately, we don’t live in a utopia, and the society we do live in has a deep and serious attachment to vehicles and the ideas and feelings of "freedom" and independence that owning a vehicle can create. Advertisements for those vehicles provide consumers with images that solidify this thought process: "Buy this car and you’ll be independent," "this one to be rugged," "be a Mom with this," etc. Our relationship with vehicles is more than thinking of them as just methods of transportation; they have come to be symbols of our personality and lifestyle. Because of this factor, as well as the size and pure vastness of America, people are less interested in the ideas of mass transit, while in places like Europe, it is widely used. This way of thinking has placed us in a fossil fuel war and on the brink of a fossil fuel crisis.

This is all you need to drive vegetarian.
Our vision at Greasecar is to solve the immediate problems we face, and provide a sustainable, renewable, cheap and cleaner burning alternative to petroleum-based fuels. It is our hope that by providing a real alternative now, with the technology available now, we can provide a realistic method of reducing our petroleum use as well as pollution. It will not solve our petroleum-addiction problems years into the future, but it will point us in the right direction while showing the world that a little bucket of ingenuity is worth a whole barrel of oil.

Our hope is that the farmers growing soybeans and corn can use those foods to power their tractors, that communities can become self-sufficient by growing foods, cooking those foods and then powering their personal and community vehicles with waste from that cycle. That the American food industry, which relies heavily on the trucking industry, can power their Mack’s and Peterbilt’s with the waste oil from America’s deep fryers to bring apples from Washington to Florida, and oranges from Florida to Washington. This may not be transportation utopia, but it will be a step toward it.



Greasecar's hardworking team is based in Florence, Mass. Check them out at greasecar.com.

The Future: Commuting in Twenty Years

by Rick Woodbury

The Tango: it takes two.
Every commuter knows that the current system of driving alone to and from work in heavy traffic is crazy, yet there is no real alternative. Commuter Cars is changing that with the Tango. The Tango, the original high-performance electric model, is designed specifically to meet the needs of the world’s urban commuter.

The Tango is small: 8 feet 5 inches long and 39 inches wide, with seating for two people in tandem. These small dimensions, 5 inches narrower than a Honda Gold Wing motorcycle, allow the Tango to:

  • Drive comfortably at 70 mph or more in a 6 foot wide, half-width freeway lane. It is the only car in the world that can lane-split i.e., drive between lanes of slow-moving or stationary traffic as done legally by motorcycles in California, Europe, and Asia.
  • Park where other cars can only dream, even perpendicularly to the curb. The entire lease payment of a production Tango could be saved in parking fees alone, making Tango ownership completely free to some consumers, when compared to their current costs of commuting and parking.
  • Transform tedious commuting into excitement with 0 to 60 mph in 4 seconds.
  • Provide a breath of fresh air as a non-polluting, zero-emission vehicle.
Once you own a Tango, you will never pay for parking again.
There are 118 million workers in the U.S. Of the 118 million, 79 percent -- that’s 92 million people -- commute, by themselves in a car, an average of 20 round-trip miles a day. They burn 5.7 billion gallons of fuel a year just by idling in traffic and waste 3.6 billion hours during all those commutes and traffic jams. That’s way too much, and I have the answer for commuting in the future: The Tango. At least 50 million of these people would rather drive a Tango to work because it's more fun, faster, more convenient, cheaper, and lastly, the right thing to do for the environment and for depleting oil reserves.

In 20 years, as Tangos are produced and cycled into the used internal combustion engine (ICE) automobile market, the Tango will reach a saturation of 50 million cars in the United States. Each Tango on the road will reduce traffic congestion by 2 to 1 and increase parking availability by 3.5 to 1. 50 million Tangos in the United States will save over 1 billion barrels of oil per year. The US represents about 1/3 of the world market so the Tango in 15 to 30 years may save over 3 billion barrels of oil per year. The energy needed to power the Tangos will be derived from renewable sources like solar and wind instead of coal and natural gas. Right now, a $2,800 solar recharging system will keep a Tango going for the average commuter for a lifetime.

Rick Woodbury is the originator of the ballasted narrow vehicle concept and co-inventor of the Tango. He is president and founder of a successful book composition company, now in its 17th year of business.

The Hydrogen Future of Automobiles

by Dr. Poul Erik Bak

Take a look inside the ultimate car of the future.
According to studies by ExxonMobil, the world will require approximately 40 percent more energy in 2020 than today, with consumption levels reaching almost 300 million oil-equivalent barrels per day. With China's economy growing at an annual rate of seven percent, its consumption will more than double to over 10 million barrels per day in 2020, making up about 10 per cent of total world consumption. A sharp increase in world vehicle population will heighten the demand for motor fuels. In 2002, there were 661 million vehicles. By 2020, the estimated total number of vehicles will be slightly below one billion.

Something needs to be done. There is a need for a massive change towards a new paradigm for a sustainable fuel -- hydrogen offers a promise that's mind-bending. Ever thought a gas pump would be clean enough to eat on?

The world has seen hydrogen powered vehicles in operation in Germany during the 1930's and the fuel cell (the device that electrochemically converts stored hydrogen to electricity) was invented before the internal combustion engine. It makes you wonder what happened.

Now, it is time for a change. External circumstances -- soaring oil prices, melting of the Artic, global conflicts -- call for the new paradigm for fuel; a change that poses an enormous engineering and marketing challenge. The engineering challenge is to supply and manage the hardware and the marketing challenge to convert users from fossil fuels to clean hydrogen.

A pollution-free Hummer, powered by hydrogen? It's true! (Don't look too close, but that's Gov. Arnold behind the wheel).
This is easier said than done, of course, but we are making significant progress. Since the oil crisis in the seventies, engineers and scientists have been working on prototypes of modern hydrogen powered vehicles. Over the past few years, the world has seen a systematic deployment of hydrogen fuelling stations and small fleets of hydrogen-powered automobiles. Moreover, they work! Like any global revolution, a properly built infrastructure is absolutely necessary to sustain the movement. We’re getting it done. All major oil companies with respect for shareholders and stakeholders are involved in a hydrogen project. Critics claim that is might only be a publicity stunt. This does not seem to be the case. Whilst the change to hydrogen won't happen overnight, it will happen faster than people imagine. Big oil is aware of this: the present long term strategy of the majority of oil companies is to become energy companies capable of supplying a portfolio of energies.

More than a few things need to happen before major energy and oil companies actually begin constructing a hydrogen infrastructure, so here is the first: Hydrogen is an energy carrier just like electricity. To the driver at the refueling station, hydrogen is the energy source for the automobile. It is therefore up to the drivers to start demanding hydrogen from their fuelling stations. Although not the zero emission vehicles that fuel cell vehicles provide, then hydrogen internal combustion engines will show their value to develop a hydrogen infrastructure. The advantage: existing cars can be retrofitted and conventional mass production systems can instantly bring about hydrogen cars.

The message of the future of fuels for automobiles is clear: Hydrogen is the best fuel in the world!. Go out there and demand it, and keep asking for hydrogen-powered vehicles at the showrooms. Never underestimate the power of the consumer; the first step to the future is to influence the present with your voice. With enthusiastic, determined voices, marketing people at automobile headquarters will soon know: The future of the automobile is the hydrogen-powered, fuel cell car!

Poul Erik Bak is the founder of ZEES - Zero Emission Energy Systems - and the editor of the H2CARSBIZ Magazine.