Drive Clean and Green Across Missouri Event Report

The Drive Clean and Green Across Missouri caravan came to Springfield, MO's SMSU campus today. Since Nixa is just 6 miles South of Springfield and only about 15 miles from the SMS campus I decided to head up and check things out. I was actually hoping they'd want me to pull my Prius up as part of the event, but alas things were already kinda set up.

There was one white Prius there. 2 "Hybrid" Silverados that I had to restrain myself from taking the GM guy to task on. Several E85 vehicles, a biodiesel Jeep, a propane powered truck, a Natural Gas truck, an Escape hybrid, and a few other interesting characters including the very cool looking copper chopper that runs on pure ethanol and is designed to look like a moonshine distillary!(the photo at the top)

The even seemed fairly well attended, mostly by students and the press, considering the overcast drizzly weather.

One of the more unique vehicles was the biodiesel Corvette. It has a built in, plug in, converter for any oil to diesel. The guy claims he's gotten as high as 55mpg on the highway and topped out at 120mph though the car started shuddering at that speed!


The give aways were few but OK. They apparently had some sun shades...I didn't get one mostly b/c I wouldn't use it with the heatshield I already have and b/c they seemed to be a bit 'tight' with giving them out. I did get a kinda cool wrist band that says "Drive Green" in the Lance Armstrong "Live Strong" vein.


Lots more photos are available HERE <--

 

I think that's where he pours the oil in. I should mention, the owner of that car is a bit of a showboater and a goof. He kept talking about how he's left off some improvements on the vehicle b/c he likes it to break down b/c it makes for 'better TV'. Seems he uses this thing as a way to leverage onto various TV shows. He mentioned his concept for a documentary where he would go from LA to NYC as fast as possible and he didn't car if he got tickets b/c every time he got stopped he'd use the policeman as part of the 'script' when describing some new aspect of the car and how it works.