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Kids Build Soybean-Fueled Car

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From CBS News: The star at last week's Philadelphia Auto Show wasn't a sports car or an economy car. It was a sports-economy car †™ ¢‚¬„¢¢‚¬Å¡‚¢†™‚¢‚¢¢¢‚¬Å¡‚¬¦‚¡¢‚¬Å¡‚¬†™‚¢‚¢¢¢¬…¡‚¬? one that combines performance and practicality under one hood.

But as CBS News correspondent Steve Hartman reports in this week's Assignment America, the car that buyers have been waiting decades comes from an unexpected source and runs on soybean bio-diesel fuel to boot.

A car that can go from zero to 60 in four seconds and get more than 50 miles to the gallon would be enough to pique any driver's interest. So who do we have to thank for it. Ford? GM? Toyota? No †™ ¢‚¬„¢¢‚¬Å¡‚¢†™‚¢‚¢¢¢‚¬Å¡‚¬¦‚¡¢‚¬Å¡‚¬†™‚¢‚¢¢¢¬…¡‚¬? just Victor, David, Cheeseborough, Bruce, and Kosi, five kids from the auto shop program at West Philadelphia High School.

The five kids, along with a handful of schoolmates, built the soybean-fueled car as an after-school project. It took them more than a year †™ ¢‚¬„¢¢‚¬Å¡‚¢†™‚¢‚¢¢¢‚¬Å¡‚¬¦‚¡¢‚¬Å¡‚¬†™‚¢‚¢¢¢¬…¡‚¬? rummaging for parts, configuring wires and learning as they went. As teacher Simon Hauger notes, these kids weren't exactly the cream of the academic crop.

"We have a number of high school dropouts," he says. "We have a number that have been removed for disciplinary reasons and they end up with us."

One of the Fab Five, Kosi Harmon, was in a gang at his old school †™ ¢‚¬„¢¢‚¬Å¡‚¢†™‚¢‚¢¢¢‚¬Å¡‚¬¦‚¡¢‚¬Å¡‚¬†™‚¢‚¢¢¢¬…¡‚¬? and he was a terrible student. The car project has changed all that.

"I was just getting by with the skin of my teeth, C's and D's," he says. "I came here, and now I'm a straight-A student."

To Hauger, the soybean-powered car shows what kids †™ ¢‚¬„¢¢‚¬Å¡‚¢†™‚¢‚¢¢¢‚¬Å¡‚¬¦‚¡¢‚¬Å¡‚¬†™‚¢‚¢¢¢¬…¡‚¬? any kids †™ ¢‚¬„¢¢‚¬Å¡‚¢†™‚¢‚¢¢¢‚¬Å¡‚¬¦‚¡¢‚¬Å¡‚¬†™‚¢‚¢¢¢¬…¡‚¬? can do when they get the chance.

"If you give kids that have been stereotyped as not being able to do anything an opportunity to do something great, they'll step up," he says.

Stepping up is something the big automakers have yet to do. They're still in the early stages of marketing hybrid cars while playing catch-up to the Bad News Bears of auto shop.

"We made this work," says Hauger. "We're not geniuses. So why aren't they doing it?"

Kosi thinks he knows why. The answer, he says, is the big oil companies.

"They're making billions upon billions of dollars," he says. "And when this car sells, that'll go down †™ ¢‚¬„¢¢‚¬Å¡‚¢†™‚¢‚¢¢¢‚¬Å¡‚¬¦‚¡¢‚¬Å¡‚¬†™‚¢‚¢¢¢¬…¡‚¬? to low billions upon billions."

I saw this story on the news the other day and it is quite interesting that a few kids were able to develop such a car when there are highl paid engineerers and stuff working for big car companys that couldnt make this car.

I guess when you work for compaines like those you cannot take risks in trying to develop such cars as you job is always on the line but that is where the companies should be rewarding their employees for thinking out of the box...

Although it is going to be extremly hard for this car to be mass produuced any time soon as the big oil companies do have a huge hand in all of this and will try to push the companies who try to manufacture this car out of the market and their profits are at stake on this one.

any engineer can do this.. not a problem.

the market constraint is the issue. and the economy. the landscape issues are huge.

neat car though and a great "when i was young" accomplishment that will hopefully inspire the kids. even better, it shows the kind of fortitude kids these days seem to lack. I rebuilt a car in my teens, most kids in highschool can't replace their own spark plugs nowadays.

wonder they didn't build a motorcycle though.. they could have built one for each of them and rode in a pack.