Greenspeed

Greenspeed. I’m Greg Martin as Line On Agriculture presents the Harvest Clean Energy Report.

Imagine grocery shopping and grabbing a bottle of vegetable oil off the shelf...then pouring it into your gas tank on your car or truck. Jenny Kniss is a student and member of the Boise State club called Greenspeed.

KNISS: It’s the brainchild of Dave Schenker who is our current president. He’s just always had an affinity for engines and he had been doing some research on people using vegetable oil in their vehicles and became enamored with it and when he became an engineering student he decided to take that to the next level with land speed racing.

Ken Fukamoto recently graduated but is now a community member of the group. He says they don’t endorse vegetable oil as a fuel but are really out to prove that biofuels are just as viable as petroleum based fuels.

FUKUMOTO: And all we’re really trying to do is we’re using it to break records to try and alleviate some of the myths about biodiesel like biodiesel isn’t as strong as regular diesel or is as powerful and so if we can beat diesel records on just the pure crude form of biodiesel which is vegetable oil then we can kind of show the public that in fact biofuels can be just as fast and just as powerful.

Greenspeeds converted Chevy S10 diesel truck has broken one record by topping out at 155 miles per hour and putting out over 700 horsepower. That has gained them some pretty impressive and very deserving attention.

KNISS: So when we actually took the world record last November we started to gain some pretty serious attention including being invited to the Washington DC Auto Show, we were awarded the Trail Blazer award from Boise State University. The next record we’re after is the 215 mile per hour petroleum fuel record for our class.

I found out it is all about power...not miles per gallon.

KNISS: You know that’s not something that we are even approaching at this point. Time trials and the research that we’re doing currently have nothing to do with miles per gallon. So that’s research that we hope to participate in, in the future.

FUKUMOTO: It’s not something that we look at because there’s no correlation between what we’re doing and what people normally look at as miles per gallon but this is a pure race vehicle.

I highly recommend that you check out their website and their video at www.greenspeed.me. For additional information on clean energy, visit harvestcleanenergy.org. That’s today’s Line On Agriculture. I’m Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.???www.harvestcleanenergy.org