Johnathan Goodwin's hybrid auto creation looks nothing like a Prius.
It is a Ford F-450. It is 14,000 pounds of pure mean, green machine, CBS News correspondent Hari Sreenivasan reports.
"I can run hydrogen, biodiesel, diesel fuel, or natural gas," Goodwin said.
Goodwin is a natural-born tinkerer. He started by tearing apart a lawnmower and putting it back together when he was just 6 years old.
Now, every big truck or car this self-taught 7th-grade drop-out from Wichita, Kan., works on gets more powerful, more fuel-efficient, and faster.
He transformed one '64 Impala into an 850-horsepower monster that gets 25 miles to the gallon and goes from zero to 60 mph in 3.5 seconds.
Goodwin and his team in Kansas have modified more than 100 vehicles in the past 10 years. He works on a small scale, and his modifications can cost anywhere from hundreds to thousands of dollars per vehicle. And his work is leaving car designers in Detroit jealous.
"I'm not held by the same restraints that they are," he says.
Having your car green-tuned by Goodwin is gaining celebrity status. The 1984 Jeep that Sreenivasan got a road tour of belongs to the Governator, Arnold Schwarzenegger.
"We've doubled the horsepower. We've tripled the torque and doubled the fuel economy," Goodwin said.
Goodwin's greatest creation to date is the LincVolt.
It's Neil Young's 1959 Lincoln. It weighs 2.5 tons, is 19 feet long, can go 160 mph. And it has zero emissions, because it can go more than 100 miles on just batteries.
"Nobody wants to sacrifice size and style to gain fuel efficiency, and there's no reason to do it," Goodwin said.
Why settle, when you can have big, beautiful, clean and green under one hood?
See also:
• Couric & Co. blog: From Gas Guzzler To Lean, Green Machine
• CNET News: Dreamforce: Neil Young shows off his green machine
Legendary rocker Neil Young made a special appearance during Salesforce.com's Dreamforce conference keynote address. He didn't mention cloud computing, but talked about his 1959 Mark IV Lincoln Continental.
Neil Young and Marc Benioff
(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET News)Young has spent more than $100,000 to green his 5,000-pound "Thinkin' Lincoln" former gas hog. "It's a piece of America art," said Young, who is an avid car collector. He hopes to get the equivalent of 100 miles per gallon and take the $10 million Progressive Insurance Automotive X Prize. "We are over halfway there (to 100 mph) with this car," he said.
"We took Ford, GM, and Chrysler and instead of having them in one building, we have it on the Internet. We are always getting input from our huge virtual shop," Young said.
Young has focused his green car efforts on the electric grid, which he said can support 180 million vehicles and compressed natural gas. Young is working with Johnathan Goodwin, who has expertise in turning big cars into green cars. The car can run on electricity for short runs and on compressed natural gas for longer trips. A generator recharges the battery when it is using alternative fuels.
The engine is a 150-kilowatt electric motor that produces the equivalent of 500 horsepower. The car cruises at 80 mph and can reach speeds of 160 mph, Goodwin said. "It's essentially like a train. We use one motor to push it down the road, with a range of 80 to 100 miles." A generator, that produces 75 kilowatts, comes on automatically to power a rotary engine that runs on compressed natural gas and refuels the batteries.
"We want to eliminate roadside refueling and take distribution out of the loop," Young said. The energy generated by the car could be used to power several houses or power tools from a car, he added. Information is available at the LincVolt Web site.
The LincVolt 1959 Lincoln Continental
(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET News)
Check out the video from The Wichita Eagle, featuring Goodwin, who developed the hybrid technology and Neil Young.
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