Green and speed. Not likely for those two to go together. Greenspeed is a student organization located in Boise State University. These guys (and gals?) are building and racing a vegetable-powered truck at the Bonneville Flats. Hyrbrids? Who needs them when you have dedicated people working like them. Straight from their website, here is what they are about:

“The student club Greenspeed from Boise State University was formed by Dave Schenker. He spent two years finding the right people up for the job of getting the club off the ground. The idea was brought up in countless conversations with other students to no avail. He kept trying until he found Jozey Mitcham. While studying together, the conversation turned to cars. It turns out that Jozey’s family has a very long racing history at Bonneville Salt Flats. This experience, combined with Dave’s mechanical background is a vicious combo. After recruiting a few of their fellow students, and many grueling months to make the club official, they are well on their way to racing the world’s fastest truck to run on vegetable oil.

The club currently consists of seven engineering students and one recently graduated engineer: Dave Schenker (Mechanical), Jozey Mitcham (Mechanical), Adrian Rothenbühler (Electrical), Jason Brotherton (Materials Science), Brett Keys (Materials Science), Cory Sparks (Materials Science), Adam Spiegelman (Mechanical), and John Pasley (Mechanical). They all joined the club for different reasons. Some wanted to learn more about motors and how to go FAST, some wanted to apply their new found engineering knowledge to real life issues, others wanted to learn more about alternative fuels, and some joined the club to make more engineering friends (and the inevitable glory). The main attraction was to do something that hasn’t been done before at the Bonneville Salt Flats.

There is one other university, partnered with Ford, competing at the Salt Flats. They have run both a hydrogen fuel cell vehicle and a battery powered vehicle. By bringing pure vegetable oil as a fuel to the race, we can help familiarize the public with a variety of alternative fuels and show them how well they work. The club plans on putting a Cummins Diesel engine into a small pickup and run it on vegetable oil from the campus cafeteria. In the future, they would like to expand to other fuel alternatives, such as oil extracted from algae grown at Boise State.“

Check out the interview here: