Fast Company magazine has an amazing article about Johnathan Goodwin, a Wichita mechanic who’s able to modify cars to provide drastically more running time on dramatically less fuel (or biodiesel).

As the article reports, “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.”

What else?

“In 2005, he set to work adapting his own H1 Hummer to burn a combination of hydrogen and biodiesel. He installed a Duramax in the Hummer and plopped a carbon-fiber tank of supercompressed hydrogen into the bed. The results were impressive: A single tank of hydrogen lasted for 700 miles and cut the diesel consumption in half. It also doubled the horsepower.”

Most frustrating, though, is his claim that “‘[U.S. car companies] could do all this stuff if they wanted to,’ … ‘The technology has been there forever. They make 90% of the components I use.'”

I don’t know whether all of this is true or feasible (Neil Young and Arnold Schwarzenegger seem to think so, as they’ve commissioned Goodwin to convert their cars to run on biodiesel). What I do know is that stories like these are what inspire conspiracy theories about government suppression and Tesla machines.