Ken Lebrun, over at Revolution-Green has posted an interesting story. Here’s an excerpt:

Douglas Pelmear, the owner and chief engineer of HP2g in Ohio has announced that he will be forced to close down his operations due to the lack of funding and interest. Douglas has appeared on the NBC’s Morning Show and was subsequently invited to the White House Auto Show. Douglas Pelmear has managed to squeeze 110 miles per gallon out of an E85 V8 Hybrid Mustang. Yup you heard it right, 110 mpg and still no banks will  touch him. Even after presenting what he had to the US Department of Energy during an auto show that was supposed to be bring to the front technologies that could solve our average horrible fuel economy, Douglas still hasn’t received a grant.

[...]

Douglas’ technology utilizes variable cylinder displacement in a standard or hybrid automobile engine. To keep it simple, by skipping a firing cycle in a piston every other fire, you effectively cut fuel consumption in half for each cylinder with the skipped cycle. When the power is needed, then the computer senses it and quits skipping every other fire cycle and gives you your raw power back. The computer system can manipulate the firing cycle of all 8 pistons. When a piston firing cycle is skipped; the computer shuts off that injector for one cycle. The piston/chamber is still smoking hot from the previous fire and the fresh air that gets sucked in gets compressed and heated with a subsequent expansion or half expansion of that cylinder. Utilizing this idea on a hybrid car design, Douglas has taken a V-8 mustang 5.0 and made it consistently run 110 miles per gallon on E85 ethanol. Douglas’ designed a 4.8L V-8 motor that ranges from 400 horsepower all the way down to 15 horsepower. When cruising down the highway at 65 mph and there is a lower but steady load on the engine, the computer starts cycling through cylinders and skipping them one by one.

Now wouldn’t be awesome to be able to drive a 400 horsepower V-8 car around and still be able to get over 100 mpg when you wanted to? I think everyone would. Well everyone except for those who have never looked at the fuel price when they are filling up their $60k sports-car. Here in lies the problem. Only the people who are suffering and forking out half their income to pay for the gas to get to work are concerned about fuel economy. Sure, politicians and the business elite will spout all day long about how they want to lower the cost of transportation, but that’s just  politics. They say it for your vote. When it comes to putting our tax dollars where their mouth was during their elections; you get a whiff of reality like Douglas Pelmear. In their view, why would you introduce a big change when you could profit from millions of little changes? 

Someone with a large pocketbook and who is sincere about freeing the world from the bonds of oil needs to hook Douglas up. 

Mr. Douglas Pelmear
HP2g
2611 N. Scott St.
Napoleon OH 43545
Energy Technology Company w/ 110mpg Hybrid V8 Engine.
www.hp2g.com