In Indonesia, a group of researchers and their sponsors claimed to have successfully completed a 3,200 kilometer road trip from west Timor’s Atambua to the capital city of Indonesia, Jakarta, using only the oil from jatropha plant as fuel.

This was a milestone and a good promotion for the development and utilization of jathropa curcas plant as a clean and good alternative fuel for conventional fossil fuel like diesel. However, there are still some concern on the emissions of jathropa oil, compatibility to the existing car, and environmental impact of its production, since some environmentalist feared that it may encourage some jathropha producers to deforest an existing forest just for the sake of planting jatropa plants.

Some studies showed that jatropha oil has a calorific value of 9470 Kcal/kg, or just 6.88% lower than the calorific value the conventional diesel fuel. It has also 89.2% lower sulfur content, thus has a lower Sulfur Oxides (Sox) emissions.