Escape From Berkeley, By Any Non-Petroleum Means Necessary!

This morning, I headed over to Shipyard Labs in the Berkeley flatlands (not very coincidentally, located just a few blocks from the 24 Hours Of LeMons HQ in Emeryville) to witness preparations for the start of the Escape From Berkeley race to Las Vegas. The rules are pretty simple: vehicles can't run on any form of petroleum fuel, they can only bring 10KWH equivalent of fuel to start with, and the teams must obtain all further fuel for free along the race route. Otherwise, anything goes- and they've managed to get permits to stage this madness on public roads! Make the jump to see some of the machines that will be competing for the $5,000 first prize. More »