Buy a Burger, Save the Earth

I have to say, I've been very impressed by Burger King recently. First, their social networking genius idea of unfriending people on Facebook for free food, and now this: electricity generation from the drive-thru.

A BK franchise in Hillside, New Jersey is teaming up with New Energy Technologies, Inc. to install a Motion Power energy harvester in the drive-thru. This installation will work as a durability test.

The technology works like this: cars drive over a bunch of tiny strips; the kinetic energy of the moving cars is captured and reused. According to the manufacturer, the technology has the following advantages:

• Cost-effective -- easy to manufacture and low operating costs
• Simple and reliable mechanical configuration which is easy to maintain
• Ease of Installation
• Low-profile assembly can be mounted directly atop existing roadways with little or no modifications to roadways
• Modular scalable configuration
• Can be installed in virtually any location

Eventually, New Energy hopes to install the Motion Power technology at high traffic locations such as toll booths, traffic intersections, rest areas, travel plazas, border crossings, neighborhoods with traffic calming zones, and drive-thrus.

Cool idea - fingers crossed that it passes the durability tests and we're driving over these things everywhere soon :)