Doing the Impossible: What Detroit Doesn’t Want You to Know

Increasing gas mileage and horsepower with fast food waste

“Think about it,” Goodwin laughs. “…a 5,000-pound vehicle that gets 60 miles to the gallon and does zero to 60 in five seconds!”

Thus does Johnathan Goodwin, a 37-year old “who looks like Kevin Costner with better hair,” describe the 2005 H3 Hummer he’s recently hacked into being a tricked-out electric hybrid that runs on waste frying oils from fast food joints.

Fast Company Magazine calls him the “Motorhead Messiah” for taking the hugest gas-guzzlers in America and modifying them to get up to four times their rated gas mileage while burning low-emission biofuels grown on US soil - all the while doubling their horsepower. That’s what is becoming known as “Green and Mean.”

Martin Tobias, CEO of Imperium Renewables - the nation’s largest producer of biodiesel fuels, says Goodwin is in a league of his own. “Nobody out there is doing experiments like he is.” Particularly no one in Detroit. The big American automakers have been whining for decades that what Goodwin does regularly just because he can is impossible.

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