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Engineer turns SUVs greener

A Hummer H1

Santa Monica (U.S.): In 2000 Jonathan Goodwin, a self-described “gearhead”, bought his first Hummer, an old H1, in Denver, Colorado. “The thing did eight miles to the gallon (3 km per litre) and nought to 100 kmph in about two days,” he recalls.

On his drive home to Wichita, Kansas, it broke down three times. The first morning home with it, he decided to run the Hummer through the pond behind his house. “It was supposed to be waterproof,” he says. This one wasn’t. He hit the water at 80 kmph and turned his new vehicle into a submarine. The engine died.

Rather than fix the engine, he replaced it with a new Duramax diesel and increased the fuel economy to 28 km per gallon (kmpg), tripled the horsepower to 600 and quadrupled the torque to 1,200ft lbs.

Driven by his quest for more power and less consumption he had inadvertently stumbled across a solution for America’s SUV-loving masses. The byproduct of the system he installed is lower emissions — a greener output for these thirsty beasts. “Now we can have our cake and eat it,” he says.

Today, Mr. Goodwin drives a green Hummer H2 that he transformed from a 325hp, 16 kmpg gasbucket into a 500hp, 40 kmpg, 900ft lbs of torque white-knuckle ride, using the Duramax 6.6 litre engine that he runs on biodiesel — in this case, B100 canola oil.

In addition, with the systems he has designed, the engine will run on multiple types of vegetable oil, CNG or hydrogen.

With basic conversion costs starting at around $27,000 it’s not for the budget commuter, but with the double jackpot of increased power and greater efficiency he’s not short of orders as co-founder of SAE Energy, which works at the forefront of alternative fuel research. He has transformed gas-guzzling SUVs into fuel-efficient high-performance green machines and is now converting vintage autos to biodiesel and electric hybrids for the likes of California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and rock legend Neil Young.

What Mr. Goodwin managed will become increasingly important to carmakers in the U.S., where the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) bill means on average a company’s cars must manage at least 55 kmpg by 2010. Mercedes Benz was recently hit with a record $30 million fine for only managing 40 kmpg, short of the 2006 limits of 44 kmpg.

The delivery company UPS recently consulted Mr. Goodwin on solutions for its fleet’s astronomical costs. He estimates that switching its vehicles to a biofuel/gas-hybrid system could save more than $1 per gallon used, reduce their emissions and provide greater longevity to the engines.

Mr. Goodwin sees three stages to a process of change: converting all autos to diesel which can then run on biofuel, making the step to bio-electric and finally to hydroelectric, meaning cars will run on water. — © Guardian Newspapers Limited, 2008

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