SEMA 2008: biodiesel Hummer snowmobile update
Click above for high-res gallery of this attention grabber
That unholy marriage of a Hummer and a snowmobile turns out to be an Antarctic vehicle by Zero South. This biodiesel-powered truck thing has tracks instead of wheels, and is set to be piloted by the likes of Apollo astronaut Buzz Aldrin and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak in a South Pole expedition in 2009 called Drive Around the World. Seriously. The whole thing is going to be filmed in 3-D by Chris Paine, the man behind the documentary, "Who Killed the Electric Car?" The vehicle runs on B99 and can do 35 mph but they will be restricted to just 15 mph on the run. The plan has actually been modified recently and it is said Jay Leno will be helping to install a VW diesel four-cylinder engine to act as a generator for four electric motors powering each track cluster. We can hardly wait.
Check out the gallery to judge for yourself.
Gallery: SEMA 2008: Hummer snowmobile
Photos copyright ©2008 Frank Filipponio/Weblogs, Inc.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
steve 10:31AM (11/07/2008)
Who cares?
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demosthenes 2:45PM (11/07/2008)
Well you certainly took the time to read the article and partake in the rigmarole of posting.
For my part I am interested in all applications involving in-wheel motors since I believe it is the future of personal transportation. Whether the application is one I would use is almost immaterial. Its proliferation will undoubtedly advance technology in this area and lower overall costs in vehicles I am interested in.
gorr 10:48AM (11/07/2008)
This can be an efficient vehicule if society collapse and become like the society we saw in the prophetic film Mad Maz II. No more bridges due to war, broken houses and broken roads with desperates robbing everything to survive. Better have an un-brokable truck that can go anywhere and resist to mad pedestrians that want to tilt it to get you out. Better have bio-diesel because no more economy is going on.
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tankd0g 1:58PM (11/07/2008)
Wtf is up with the windshield?
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LaughingMan 3:44PM (11/07/2008)
Golly! Now that's a snowmachine!
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Sidewinder 10:39PM (11/07/2008)
Jeez! Does this thing remind anyone else of the god-awful tractor things that Scott tried to use to get to the South Pole shortly after the turn of the last century?
You all remember how that turned out, right?
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GenWaylaid 2:08AM (11/08/2008)
And here I thought it was one of those really elaborate arcade games.
The vehicle weighs at least three tons, Buzz will be 79 years old, the fuel gels at -10 Celsius, and forward vision is dependent on a pair of screens. What could go wrong?
I still don't understand the screens. Snowblindness protection? Crevasse detector readout? Informatics gone wild? Or do they just think that Antarctica is too cold to even look at? Maybe the screens will display soothing images of tropical beaches while they drive in circles on the ice.
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Paul from Florida 4:49PM (11/08/2008)
Diesel is bio-fuel. It is but cleaned up dead animal fat that's been in the ground for a while.
Why is ground oil( dead animals ) that is dug up, made into fuel and fertilizer, then put on ground using fuel, then eaten by animals, that are transported by fuel, slaughtered, made by burning fuel into food fats.....why is this more 'efficient'?
It isn't.
Unless you are an chemical, physics, economics brain dead lefty.
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DarthDad 8:38PM (11/08/2008)
WOW!!!!! An electirc car powered by a "internal combustion engine"!?!?!?!?
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comatus 9:24PM (11/08/2008)
Um, yeah, Darth. The first prototype was built by REO in 1955. It's a little like those electric railroad engines you see every day with diesels in them. Hard to get your head around a stunning new concept, sometimes.
The track assembly, on the other hand, was a dealer option on the Model T.
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Hucbald 9:43PM (11/08/2008)
Several years ago one of the truck mags I read did a conversion of an F-350 to tracks like these, though without the in-wheel electric motor pizzaz, and you could change between the tracks and 35" tires at any point. There was a fold-down winch tower in the bed to raise and lower the tracks or wheels for the change so that a single person could do the job.
Those tracks are available for any lifted HD 4x4 pickup, btw, but they are really, really expensive.
Personally, I'd rather have the pickup, but that's just me.
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John Rowell 11:50PM (11/08/2008)
15 mph? In that big machine? Wouldn't a biodiesel-powered snowmobile make more sense?
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