CNN Story

Here is a story from CNN on vegcars.

What is the whole story?

I received the following comment on my April 29th post. She wrote:

What happens to your mileage (miles per gallon) and net emissions when you figure in the energy expended (fossil fuel or otherwise) to deliver the filtered WVO to your door?

It is a great question. I don't have an exact answer as far as net emissions and my mileage, adjusted for the delivery. But how many Americans really know their true efficiency or pollution for any fuel? How much energy is consumed extracting the oil, delivering it half-way around the world, refining it, delivering it to the stations etc. And how many deaths and injustices are committed in the process of bringing petroleum to our gas tank?

In my case, the guy who delivers the oil, runs his truck on biodiesel. He trades filtered wvo to the biodiesel makers for the fuel. Ian drove approximately 350 miles round-trip in his Powerstroke Diesel. I'm guessing (conservatively) that he got an average of 10 miles per gallon on the trip. That means that he used 35 gallons to deliver 1,000 gallons to us.

It is difficult to calculate exactly how much energy and emissions are attributable to producing and burning one gallon of diesel fuel or vegetable oil. The information that I have read, indicates that it isn't even close. The process of growing plants removes carbon from the air. Some of that carbon goes back into the air when it is burned in a vegcar. Petroleum takes 100 of the carbon out of the ground where it is sequestered. Then, when it is burned, a good deal of carbon is released into the air. The net effect is that vegetable oil has a much smaller impact on the airborne carbon.

I read something else recently that was very interesting. The energy required to build a new car is tremendous. This guy's assertion was that to save the energy that went into producing a new Prius, one would have to drive that prius several hundred thousand miles compared to buying a used car that had mileage in the mid 20's. I love Prius's and am not knocking them. I am just pointing out that the whole story is a big and complicated one.

If anyone has seen any data on this, please send it along.

Heartland Festival Tomorrow

I know this is late notice, but any of you who are within a couple of hours of Livingston, CA (in the central valley near Turlock) come on out to the Heartland Festival. There will be music, food, great information on organic farming and swimming in the Merced River. Click here for directions.

There will be at least 2 or 3 vegcars there.

Great souce for filtered WVO

I get emails from time to time from people asking where they can buy filtered wvo for their vegcar. Today we got our second delivery from a company out of San Luis Obispo, CA called Sphere Energy. The owner, 23 year old Ian Hoover, is a very bright mechanical engineer who is devoted to alternative fuels an wvo in particular. I have a short video interview I made today that I will post to the blog soon.

He separates the oil after heating and filtering it. The "sludge" is picked up by another renderer. The creamy stuff is sold to a biodiesel plant and the "amber" is sold to vegcar drivers like me. We purchased three 330 gallon "totes" filled with 5 micron filtered wvo for $1.75/gallon (delivered 200 miles!).

I recommend Ian highly. I have already run 165 gallons of his oil through my car (a previous test order). The oil performed perfectly, even through the 20 degree winter weather.

$4 per Gallon

ABC News reports that gasoline prices in San Francisco topped $4.00 per gallon this week.

The article notes that,

Gas prices often shoot up in the spring, as refineries make the switch to summer-blend gasolines, creating glitches in supply. But the standoff with Iran has inflicted a double whammy on prices.

This is great news! Let's hope for $5 per gallon by the end of the year.

330 Gallon Totes

We have started using 330 gallon "totes" to store and dispense wvo. Here I am with the 660 gallons we purchased a couple of months back. As the season warms up, I will likely get back to collecting and filtering my own. Filtering in the winter is just too slow with my current setup. I am still reluctant to put additional energy into heating the oil to facilitate filtering.

Fox Rent-a-Car Left Me Hanging

My letter to Fox Rent-a Car...

Dear Madam or Sir,

I flew into San Jose Airport in California on March 7 with a reservation for a Honda Civic Hybrid. I was really looking forward to renting a hybrid. So much so, that I posted about it on my blog here. To my chagrin, when I arrived at the airport, the guy behind the counter let me know that not only didn’t they have a hybrid for me, they had no cars at all. He said it in a nonchalant way, and added that this happens from time to time. Sorry.

I asked if Fox was going to help me rent from another agency, perhaps honor the $44/day rate that I had been promised when I reserved the car online. He said no. I walked down the line asking for quotes from a couple other companies. As you know, when booking at the airport, rates are considerably higher. I wasted about a half hour waiting in line and getting quotes and then got a car from Enterprise for $59/day (Hertz wanted $99!).

I posted my dissatisfaction on my blog here. I am really upset by your company’s lack of integrity around reservations. How difficult would it have been to have the agents call me and the other travelers to let us know we had no rental car waiting for us? These agents (there were two) were just sitting around. They had no business to conduct.

I applaud you for offering hybrid rentals but don’t think that I will risk the inconvenience of arriving and having no car waiting for me. I travel frequently and would have loved to do more for the environment.

Disappointedly yours,
Dan Rosenberg
North Fork, CA

Lovecraft Commercial

Check this out. I think some friends of Lovecraft made this commercial. I don't think it actually runs on TV.