How about wood for a fuel? It’s renewable, plentiful, and local. The thought isn’t anything new but with the soaring price in gasoline, it’s making a come back. Just don’t call it a come back ’cause this lumberjack is going to show you what his wood-burning Dodge is made of by driving coast-to-coast.
Basically the system gassifies the wood and feeds the syngas into the standard engine. It can run on pretty much any biomass material you can burn, including switchgrass, crop residues, and probably dead hobos and hookers too.
The Dodge tops off around 80 MPH and gets about 1 PWM. (pound of wood per mile) We can’t image that the whole smoky, wood burning system will impress Al Gore types but at least you’re saving on gas. The ladies are sure to love your new lumberjack muscles thanks to the required wood chopping though.