#Eco-friendlyCars

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Thinking of going green with your daily commute? There are dozens of options available in today’s market for an eco-friendly car and if you’re curious on which ones are greenest, you’ve come to the right place.

Ford’s documentary series, The Big SHFT: 10 Innovators Changing Our World, goes beyond the automotive sector to put emphasis on people creating sustainable businesses to affect positive change around the world. The short film series will feature game-changing eco-entrepreneurs that have brought innovation in sustainability for areas ranging from food and fashion to urbanization, technology and design.

Toyota subsidiary Daihatsu has announced its plans of bringing 12 vehicles to this year’s Tokyo Motor Show. Four will be concept cars, three of which we can reveal already. Daihatsu’s slogan for this year’s show will be “Big Answer from Small”, which clearly emphasizes technological innovations in a compact car.

A UK engineer has built a car that runs on coffee grinds. This brilliant idea came to fruition thanks to engineer Martin Bacon (insert your own breakfast related joke here) and a team of volunteers from Teesdale Conservation in Durham, England. Powered by used coffee grinds, the modified Rover SD1 is already breaking records.

Guinness World Records has announced that it broke the record “for vehicles that run on gas from organic waste.” It can reach speeds of up to 77.5 miles per hour, with an average speed of 66.5 mph (the previous record was 47.7 mph, set by the wood-burning Beaver XR7 in 2010). This car and its team have also broken record for the longest distance driven by a coffee-powered car (they drove it from London to Manchester, which is about 209 miles).

To get things percolating, the coffee car powers its V6 engine with an on-board wood gas generator (gasification) system. The wood and coffee grounds burn at a temperature of more than 1292 F, which produces a synthetic gas made of carbon monoxide, hydrogen, and methane that can power an internal combustion engine. Now that is one strong cup of java!

To reach its top speeds, some of the clean gas is compressed to 150 PSI and injected directly into the manifold, and its cooling system uses an intercooler with two 12-volt fans attached. The coffee car has already gone through a series of modifications, which has resulted with a weight loss of 550 pounds.

Watch of video of the coffee car in action after the jump.