“Check it out. It’s actually a jet engine,” says Johnathan Goodwin, with a low whistle. “This thing is gonna be even cooler than I thought.” We’re hunched on the floor of Goodwin’s gleaming workshop in Wichita, Kansas, surrounded by the shards of a wooden packing crate. Inside the wreckage sits his latest toy—a 1985-issue turbine engine originally designed for the military. It can spin at a blistering 60,000 rpm and burn almost any fuel. And Goodwin has some startling plans for this esoteric piece of hardware: He’s going to use it to create the most fuel-efficient Hummer in history.
Goodwin, a 37-year-old who looks like Kevin Costner with better hair, is a professional car hacker.
Goodwin leads me over to a red 2005 H3 Hummer that’s up on jacks, its mechanicals removed. He aims to use the turbine to turn the Hummer into a tricked-out electric hybrid. Like most hybrids, it’ll have two engines, including an electric motor. But in this case, the second will be the turbine, Goodwin’s secret ingredient. Whenever the truck’s juice runs low, the turbine will roar into action for a few seconds, powering a generator with such gusto that it’ll recharge a set of “supercapacitor” batteries in seconds. This means the H3’s electric motor will be able to perform awesome feats of acceleration and power over and over again, like a Prius on steroids. What’s more, the turbine will burn biodiesel, a renewable fuel with much lower emissions than normal diesel; a hydrogen-injection system will then cut those low emissions in half. And when it’s time to fill the tank, he’ll be able to just pull up to the back of a diner and dump in its excess french-fry grease—as he does with his many other Hummers. Oh, yeah, he adds, the horsepower will double—from 300 to 600.
This is the sort of work that’s making Goodwin famous in the world of underground car modders. He is a virtuoso of fuel economy.
His target for Young’s car? One hundred miles per gallon.
This is more than a mere American Chopper—style makeover. Goodwin’s experiments point to a radically cleaner and cheaper future for the American car. The numbers are simple: With a $5,000 bolt-on kit he co-engineered—the poor man’s version of a Goodwin conversion—he can immediately transform any diesel vehicle to burn 50% less fuel and produce 80% fewer emissions. On a full-size gas-guzzler, he figures the kit earns its money back in about a year—or, on a regular car, two—while hitting an emissions target from the outset that’s more stringent than any regulation we’re likely to see in our lifetime.
For Goodwin, navigating this process is all about imagination and adaptability. “The point is to design cars that are flexible,” he says. “You’ll see a change in how vehicles are fueled in the future. Which fuel source will be the exclusive one or the one that’ll take over the petroleum base is, you know, anybody’s guess, so it’s like the wild, wild West of fuel technology right now. I think it’ll be a combination between a few different fuels. I know hydrogen will definitely come around.”
Industry insiders and observers agree with many of Goodwin’s prescriptions, particularly his concept of fuel flexibility. “We have to have alternatives,” says Beau Boeckmann, vice president of California’s Galpin Motors, the largest Ford dealership in the country, who recently partnered with Goodwin to convert a 2008 F450 truck to hydrogen and biodiesel. “Only with a combination of things can we get alternative fuels off the ground.” Boeckmann believes hydrogen is the true “silver bullet” for ending greenhouse gases but thinks it’ll take more than a decade to figure out how to create and distribute it cheaply. Mary Beth Stanek, GM’s director of environment, energy, and safety policy, also agrees with the multifuel approach—and points out that this is precisely how Brazil weaned itself from regular gasoline. “They pull up to the pump, and they’ve got a whole bunch of different choices,” she notes. She, too, predicts diesel will make a comeback because of its inherent fuel efficiency: “You will see more vehicles going back to diesel over a lot of different lines.”
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