With the advent of an energy crisis and the rising cost of gas, people are becoming interested in alternative forms of energy. For example, a growing number of Ukrainian drivers are turning to wood to power their cars to save money on fuel.
With the automobile industry slowly going electric, using wood as fuel hardly seems like the most practical solution. The technology isn’t exactly new. People have been creating wood-powered cars for decades, and they were actually quite popular during World War I, but in modern times, people have mostly built them as experiments, to prove that it can be done. Nowadays, more and more drivers in the Ukraine are fitting their old cars with wood burners and boilers to save money.
Eugene Chernigov attached a wood-burning stove and a metal canister to the back of his car, which connect to the engine of the car. The gas emitted from the wood combustion is stored into the metal canister, filtered, cooled and fed into the engine. His car consumes around 40 pounds of firewood per 100 kilometers, which costs him only 10 hryvna. By comparison, a liter of gas has an average cost of 20 hryvna. Depending on the quality of the wood used and how dry it is, the car can reach speeds of up to 60 miles per hour, which is pretty decent. Chernigov says that he can use plastic bottles as fuel, as well, but nothing compares to dried mulberry.
