One Fewer SUV: You Decide What Happens to It (Blow it Up? Donate it?)

converting it might be pretty expensive. I'd suggest donating it. Maybe to a national park?

Why not convert it (if you can afford that type of project) and document your journey through that? It will help start a consumer dialogue in which people can learn from. It might not be perfect or cheap, but car companies and consumers may be able to draw from your experience and do something to make it more feasible for others. Just a thought.

Donate it to a university professor (university, not community college) that is studying alternative fuel vehicles. Have them use it as a project vehicle for conversion (fuel cell?). Professors always need help in the donations departments. Or perhaps to one of the teams working on the DARPA grand challenge (http://www.darpa.mil/GRANDCHALLENGE/).

Turn it into a guest bedroom.

Sell it for scrap?

What a dork. He wants "the most attention getting, crazy idea as you could possibly think of"? The Range Rover wasn't enough attention?

You can "take if off the road forver," by selling it and purchasing carbon offsets for the life of the vehicle. Take the rest and donate it to the cause of your choice.

With ~$40k, you don't have to get creative, you just have to get movin'.

I would say find a way to be a pioneer for converting existing SUV's into a hybrid or all electric model and tell whichever auto mechanic Converts your suv could sponsor you for the conversion in return you will give them Great PR and have their company name printed and advertised on your SUV with their info. This could inspire other SUV owners to convert and clean up the air at the same time. Since the car has already been built and bought it makes sense , Hybrid also have much less noise pollution for wildlife in a National park compared to a co'2 spewing and loud suv, I do like the National Park idea though , I would say since California State Parks need so much help , maybe you could get them to convert their Cars and save them money and protect the natural environment.

I liked your donation to a park idea and that is what I submitted on the site. But also I don't think he is worry about price so i said to convert it to biodiesel and donate it to a struggling park and wildlife refuge or to a search and rescue organization.

he should do two things:

1) charge money to see it blown up or raffle off the chance to actually blow the charge -- and donate the money.

2) he should kick himself twice. once for buying it. again for this sad attempt at fame.

just donate it quietly, dude. no one's impressed that you don't want an SUV when gas is so expensive. you're no revolutionary or hero.

Word. Sell or donate it to a national park where they drive around in SUVs or pickup trucks anyway.

Please don't waste the manhours and resources that went into manufacturing a perfectly good SUV. If you had it converted to Bio or even better electric and then donated it to a green organization that SUV would go a long way to help the green movement. You could even try to contact the local media and get some news converage to bring even more attention to your endeavor and it might just inspire others to do follow suit. Just a thought. "Go green or die trying!!!"

Convert it into a fabulous low-impact living pod! Take out the engine and you can use the under-hood for storage. Take out the seats and give them to some fratboys in search of furniture. Then put in a mattress, ice-box, and maybe a mini-dvd player, and you'll have the coolest pod on the block!

(And easilty towed out of the way of rising ocean waters with a mule team!)

I agree with the donating it to a park, although I believe you may have to donate it to a state park. In the federal realm there are pretty strict requirements on using only made in the good ol' US of A vehicles.

In any event, the energy has already been expended manufacturing it. May as well let it live a happy life in a park where SUVs are truly needed on a daily basis.

Whatever you do, don't destroy it. Any automobile has a set of fixed costs associated to producing it, an initial carbon debt, if you will. Destroying it will simply result in another being created to take its place, creating further carbon debt. What's done is done, so let this one serve out is life doing something useful.

Range Rovers are pretty spacious, so perhaps it could be converted into a home for a homeless person (take out the engine, and that area could be the closet). Or put it in the back yard for the kids to play on/in. Or, if you're really ambitious, convert it to an plug in electric vehicle.

Does anyone else just not buy this?

Ryan here owns a business, dotherightthing.com, that rates companies based on users' perceptions of how much good the company is doing - no objective criteria to muddy the waters or anything. It just seems to me like a ploy for something - I mean read the copy on his site - it basically reads like a Land Rover ad, except for the blow it up part.

Justin said "perfectly good SUV"

There is no such thing.

This could make someone very rich...

This man's SUV is on of perhaps millions. If someone had the resources to make a conversion from gas to electric, it would be a major money maker. And it solves a problem.

It's real easy to ridicule the millions of SUV owners, but WAY harder to come up with solutions.

I'll buy it from you right now for $1000

mjo

I am going to buy a big old broken down pickup to convert with batteries in the bed (at least that's the current plan). Maybe make it Mad Max/End of Oil art car style? You could do that. If you have the cash after having bought a brand new gas guzzler, that is!

There are plenty of people where I live (Sacramento, CA) coming out of the woodworks doing all sorts of electric car things. I randomly bumped into a mechanic here who's converting cars in the back. Try those hub mounted motors from a previous treehugger post (if you have the cash):

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2006/08/the_hybrid_mini.php

He could donate it to a university or a national park.....donations can be written off taxes.

I have the same problem. I own a monster, which is 7 yrs old. If I sell it, someone else will continue polluting the planet. I also need to buy a new car; its production also leaves a footprint. I guess the only option is to find a buyer who uses it less than I do (7.000 miles/year). Or offset.

First of all - those of you leaving comments for Ryan, this is not his site. I'm in agreement with the suggestions for converting it to use something like bio diesel and then donating it to a worthwhile cause. But I also agree that the whole thing seems incredibly self-aggrandizing and like a lot of fluff for a tiny bit of good. Not sure this is so worthy of a post on Treehugger, but then again, why not...

Well first off I like the idea of getting rid of gas guzzling SUV's but the reality of the situation is that they are here and some people will always want one.

People talk about how bad they are for the environment and how they cost a fortune to drive. But lets be honest here everyone didn't just wake up one mourning and decide that they wanted to go green. Gas prices started to rise and the everyday person started to feel the pinch. It’s only human nature to try to distance yourself from the source of the pain. If gas prices were to drop all this save the planet green movement would slowly go back onto the back burner just like back in the 80's. The mass public of the world only look out for themselves and not for the greater good. In my opinion he should use this vehicle to show how a gas guzzling SUV can be converted into a eco friendly SUV.

Now people have suggest converting to electric but lets face it that’s going to be a small fortune and the power to weight ratio will make that range rover lose a races to a 4 year old on a big wheel. I am pretty sure that kids would have a better range too. Hydrogen conversions are joke unless you’re a prince off a small country. Bio diesel would be a great idea if the truck wasn't powered by a gasoline engine. So what does this leave you with?

Really only one option Bio-Mass. Now you might wonder what this is because I know I was when I read about it. First off it’s not some hippies idea thought up during a sweet trip.

(Simmer down now Hippies) Come its a joke!!!

No it’s an idea that was spawned by looking back in the history books. Ok now for a little trip back in the way back machine. Over 60 years ago there was this little thing that you might have heard of it. Some people call it the war to end all wars but to most of us it's World War 2. See back then there was a fuel shortage going on kind of like now, because tanks and planes don't run on happy feelings you know.

The point is people had to find a way to get around without the need for gasoline. So someone very smart thought up the idea of using wood in a wood-fueled gasification reactor to power a normal gasoline vehicle. For those of you who are wondering what the hell a wood-fueled gasification reactor is it’s basically a stove that limits the air entering the stove to keep the fire lit but not enough to burn all the fuel release from the wood (A.K.A BIOMASS). Which are carbon monoxide, Carbon Dioxide and hydrogen. Well all know hydrogen burns from the great Hindenburg disaster. These gases when put into a normal gasoline engine can be burnt without any modifications to the engine.

Now you might be wondering why i would suggest killing trees to fuel this eco tank from hell. It’s because I am not suggesting that what I am suggesting is this. Here is where you take a little of the old tech and spin the idea with some new tech and end up with something better. Think Google. They weren't the first search engine out there but they were able to take a technology and make it better and we all love them for it.

In the San Francisco they have one of the highest coffee shops to person ratio on the planet. I believe some of the people don't even sleep, but that’s a side note on this never ending post.

Now for the idea: If he where to recycle the old used coffee grounds and compressed them into pellet form. This is the same process as using sawdust to process wood pellets for wood stoves. You could power the range rover from this energy source that is normally just considered trash.

Yes you’re not going to save the planet but do you think that taking one range rover off the road will. If you need advice this would be mine. It’s not going to cost a lot of money to build a wood-fueled gasification reactor. FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) back in 1989 developed a document that explained how to build such a device. Now to be really smart I would suggest is making this and then getting sponsorship from a corporation like starbucks. They want to be in the news for looking green and the vehicle would be a great way to get media attention. Then he'd get to keep the beautiful range rover he has and his truck wouldn’t be looked at as a planet killer.

Now this is just a idea but it sounds like he is looking for something that is going to get media attention. So this there is it. People have converted lots of cars to electrics nothing new there, no one believes hydrogen works for vehicles, and Bio Diesel is old new as well. If he is looking for shock and awe this would be it.

Strip and sell every toxic part out of the vehicle, donate money to a national park or another worthy cause.

Ensure the vehicle is completely void of any oil, lube, fuel, flame retardent...basically a shell....

Then, place the vehicle on a frozen lake somewhere and begin selling guesses as to when the frame will fall through the ice...month, day, time...what ever...winner get's half the money, donate the the other half in winners name to some other worthy cause.

Output...man made reef for fish to inhabit.

Fish reef?
It would have to be cleaned up
of course

Turn it into a power plant! Sow's ear into a silk purse:

Remove the transmission and replace it with an electric generator.

Install a heat recovery boiler in place of the exhaust system, and use the hot water output from this, along with the engine cooling water, to heat a home or small process.

This would then be a small, self-contained cogeneration power plant serving a group of homes, business, or institution. More stylish than the average box (or Butler building)!

Could run as-is on gasoline, or convert to natural gas. Sorry, conversion to biodiesel for a gasoline engine is not in the cards.

Talkin bout c-c-co-cogeneration . . .

Take it to Burning Man festival. You wouldn't believe what they would do to your gas guzzler!

nonsense.....instead of wasting time arguing about it...everybody can do something if they really care for the environment....go and plant trees if they want to go "green"...

Just because workers in parks "drive around inSUVs or pickup trucks anyway" doesn't mean it makes any sense for them to do that, or that that practice should be extended by donating this to them. Instead, it should go into some application where people are now using a bigger vehicle. Lots of work trucks are bigger than this, and bigger than they need to be. It should become a work vehicle for someone who needs to carry a bunch of tools, etc., and now uses a bigger vehicle than this.

- Take the seats out and turn them into furniture.
- Sell it for parts to keep other ones on the road.

Yeah, this is an attention grab!!! But it should be donated to a school working on alternative energy projects, it could then be used as a base vehicle. Better than trashing it and wasting all those materials. No good for National Parks. The range rover sport is very much a road vehicle.

Donate it to the National Parks in Tanzania or Kenya who show people the effects of Global warming there in the Serengeti and Mount Kilimanjaro glaciers.

Good for you Ryan! I wish more people could afford your tack.

Suggestion...what about donating to a worthy group of tech-community college kids who need a project converting a vehicle to biodeisel or a friendly alternative? There are more remarkable ideas out there than there are $$ to fund them, so this might be just the start some kids need to get on a great and worthy path. Use the documented, completed project to bring awareness on how existing gas-guzzlers can be realistically converted. Wonderful things can happen when minds work together.

Hey,
You could take the car apart and create an aerial picture/artwork from the pieces creating an aerial eco advertisement. Make the picture/artwork say something about the environment. To get more attention, though this may cost you a fine.. - place this 'picture' in a public place. Well known place would help.
Then you could recycle the car pieces or sell them off which ever you prefer.
I sugest getting the car professionally taken apart.
Would take a bit of work to complete but done right would make a big statement about the lengths people are willing to go to to help the environment presenting that it is a problem that needs to be addressed.
Post it on youtube and you might get a few hits.
If you want media attention, call up television stations and tell them what you have done.
You might like to remain anonymous though so maybe don't add the number plates and car registration, but it would also cost you your car parts.
Also, you'd have to make sure the public didn't remove/steal/take any of the parts of the car.
If you wanted, you could legally do it but might also cost you and would take time. Might not come through legally though..
It can make a statement like the artist Banksy's (http://www.banksy.co.uk/) works.
I wouldn't suggest blowing the car up, think of the carbon emissions created...
Good Luck though.
Its up to you.

Hmm, I'd also love suggestions about how to convert my diesel-powered fishing boat to greener ways (1960s British Leyand engine - it's a dinosaur). Ideas? It's got to heat the stove and run the engine...

On the car front, a conversion job is definitely a good plan - but, even if technically possible, biofuels are not the way - as Friends of the Earth have been loudly saying:

>

So hand it over to mad professor for magic solution I say.

I LIKE THE IDEA ABOUT CONVERTING IT AND CRONICLING YOUR EXPERIENCE ONLINE. IT MAY ENCOURAGE OTHERS TO DO THE SAME. YOU COULD START A BLOG, WHICH TREEHUGGER COULD REFER PEOPLE TO. AND YOU WOULD BE CONTRIBUTING A GREEN ATTITUDE! THEN IF YOU WISHED YOU COULD SELL IT OR DONATE IT FOR AN AUCTION, WHICH WOULD BE NEWS WORTHY. SO HAVE AT IT!

Park it somewhere visible and convenient and then turn it into a greenhouse.

This guy is a joke, seriously how is destroying a perfectly good car somehow less wasteful than driving it for its entire service life? The pollution damage has already been done to produce this car and one less on the road means one more will be built and that makes zero impact on anything besides his own personal notoriety.

If you read the webpage it seems to have slipped his mind, that HE bought this car yet he is acting so superior, "Get your stuff together, Ford, luxury doesn't have to mean pissing gas out the tailpipe." I'm not sticking up for car companies but they build these things because people like him buy them. If he really cared about the environment he never would have purchased a car like this so he should stop his hypocritical, self-promotional grand standing.

Building this Range Rover Sport has taken many physical resources, time, effort, and so on. In it's current state it is a functional and useful piece of equipment: it was designed to be just that. Regardless of how much bigger of an
ecological footprint this vehicle leaves in comparison to other vehicles, disposing of it would cause much more trouble. Please do not attempt to take it apart and throw it "away;" as trash its individual parts are useless, toxic, and
extremely harmful.

It would be impossible to recycle your Range Rover into anything more or equally useful. Your Range Rover is made entirely of combinations of materials and many of those can never be separated. For example, a soda can is made of
four different type of metal alloys. When recycled, the entire can is melted and the remaining useful material is something that is a combination of those 4 alloys, along with the paint from the label, and so on. That new recycled
material is of lesser quality and can never be used to make another can, only something of less usefulness.

The reason that humans have caused so much environmental harm is almost completely because we use products wastefully. We buy and use disposable things and then forget that they exist when they're not in our possession
anymore. The fact is that while we no longer have to think about that one-time-use camera we bought in 1997, it continues to consume space in a landfill or release toxins preventing a clean environment. Recycling is something that
slows down the disposing process. Almost any recycled material can never be used to make something of the same quality, and most of the time a ridiculous amount of chemicals are needed to even make it useful enough to be used
again. This is why, for example, some people are allergic to recycled clothing. Think about what your Range Rover was designed to do, being used as a vehicle. That is where the engineers and designers put the majority of their effort.
They have not considered what effects it would play separated into parts and recycled or, to be completely honest, any other things people here think of.

The best thing that you can do to ensure that your Range Rover isn't harmful (or actually more harmful) is ensure that it does not get disposed of. It is useful now. Use it. Remember that matter cannot be destroyed; your Range Rover
is here to stay forever in some way or form and as you make it less of a car the parts become more and more useless to humans and harmful to the environment.

My advice to you is to pass the Range Rover onto someone else and use the money to boost development for the underprivileged or something else wise. That way you can both ensure that the car stays as a car (in the state where it
is most useful) and do good for people elseware. I guess another option would be to simply drive it less and ride a bike instead. Even if you buy a different car, even if you buy a Prius, all of the resources and materials used to make
that new car will cause much more environmental harm than you simply continuing to use the Range Rover. Consider it like this: The Range Rover has done about 48% of the damage it will do when it was produced, you using it will
maybe create 4% of the damage that it will do, and once it is disposed of it will progressively do another 48% rotting around somewhere. I made up the numbers, but that gives you the general perspective.

I agree that you shouldn't destroy it. Think of all the resources that went into making the monster. There are many creative ideas out there but the most eco-friendly option may be to sell it for parts to a company that makes electric cars or scooters. Either that or convert it as others have suggested.

I am sure you get ethanol there. use that. Fit an extra catcon to ur car!!! See that the pollution is always within limits. Allow people around who dont have a car, to use it. They will not need to buy a car for the next few years. Well, charge a nominal fee. Use the money to plant a fruit tree which will have a lot of leaves as it grows. Plant a couple of trees every month. Good enuf to offset the pollution from the car.
Install a smaller engine if possible. Try a used engine. U will burn lesser fuel.

There have been articles about sites being set up where the homeless can live in their cars. What about donating it to one of those where it can be used as a shelter for sleeping and inspiring others to do the same? Perhaps someone could donate land to create a site where people could donate SUV's for temporary shelter? With the back seats folded down, the sleeping accomodations would be great. How cool would that be - an area like a Drive In Theater, filled with parked cars for temporary housing. Someone who needs a chance to get back on their feet could be assigned to a specific SUV, given the key (they should be fixed so not driveable) so they have a secure place to keep their stuff a