It’s common knowledge that internal combustion engines, especially the diesel, were designed to run on pretty much anything that ignited and had a certain energy stored up. Rudolf Diesel wanted his patented design to run on peanut oil, for instance, while Henry Ford insisted that “if you can make it out of petroleum, you can make it with soybean oil.”
Oil was used in the first place because it had just been discovered, it was plentiful and cheap and people needed to do something with it. It is widely acknowledged that this is what killed off the first electric cars of the turn of the century, or at least played a major part in their demise.
Ford is looking back and as if it didn’t know until now, or it didn’t attribute great importance to this matter, it’s released a video detailing its commitment to finding alternative, sustainable fuels.
Debbie Mielewski, Senior Technical Leader of Materials Sustainability at Ford was the main proponent and she’s now launching the “Farm to Car” movement. It deals with the problem of creating fuel out of plant by-products “including soybeans, tomatoes, coconuts and more.
Henry Ford was well aware of this back in the 1930s; he is also quoted as having said “I foresee when industry shall draw its raw material from the fields…”