Across the U.S. on 10 gallons of gas?

MURFREESBORO, Tenn., March 1 (UPI) -- A U.S. academic says he believes he can drive across the United States from coast to coast on 10 gallons of gasoline and will begin the attempt Saturday.

Agriscientist Cliff Ricketts of Middle Tennessee State University will set out to drive the approximately 2,532-mile distance from Savannah and Tybee Island, Ga., to Long Beach, Calif.

Ricketts will use two alternative-fuel vehicles in the first 916 miles of the journey from Savannah to Fort Smith, Ark., where his fuel sources will be the sun (solar) and hydrogen from water in a 2005 Toyota Prius and 1994 Toyota Tercel, a university release said.

Leaving those two vehicles in Fort Smith, Ricketts says the remaining 1,616 miles to Long Beach will be done with a plug-in hybrid 2007 Prius using E95 --95 percent ethanol and 5 percent gas -- and electric in the form of two 10-kilowatt-hour battery packs.

The vehicle should get about "100 miles per gallon for about 200 miles until the batteries run down and then purely on ethanol only the rest of the way," he says.

Ricketts says he expects to drive the cars at between 58 mph to 65 mph along an almost entirely Interstate route.