Neil Young Shows Us How It's Done

It was Neil Young's birthday yesterday and he celebrated by writing a column over at HuffPo. It seems that in between touring and making albums, the godfather of grunge has has been tinkering with his 1959 Lincoln Continental to make it run on on natural gas, electricity or some other form of clean energy. He is entering the 20 foot, 5,000 pound car he calls the "Linc-Volt" into Progressive Auto Insurance X Prize, which is a $10 million contest to make cars that can run on 100 miles a gallon. Here's his take on how the auto industry can get involved.  

Keep building these models to keep the workforce employed but build them without engines and transmissions. These new vehicles, called Transition Rollers, are ready for a re-power. No new tooling is required at this stage. The adapters are part of the kits described next.

At the same time as the new Transition Rollers are being built, keeping the work force working, utilize existing technology now, create re-power kits to retrofit the Transition Rollers to SCEVs (self charging electric vehicles) for long range capability up to and over 100mpg. If you don't think this technology is realistic or available, check out the Progressive Insurance Automotive X prize. Alternatively, check out Lincvolt.com or other examples.

'Ole Neil's been on the renewables case for a while. Check out this track from 1974's On the Beach. Yeah, I'ma big fan!