The Decision Strategist

After his comment on How I Chose The Wrong Car, I asked my friend A.J. for more details on his decision to convert his car to vegetable oil fuel. He responded with this great email:

The lowdown on the Grease Car:

You need to start with a diesel engine- The conversion kit starts at around $1000 (I got some extras including a computer that automatically switches between WVO [waste veggie oil] and diesel).

Having a garage install the kit runs between $800-1000. Basically, you start the car on diesel to get the engine up to temperature, then run WVO, and flush diesel back into the engine before you turn off the car. The reason is so that you don’t get congealed oil in your lines. In a hot place like Arizona you could probably get away with not flushing the lines in Summer.

Since you have two tanks, if you run out of WVO, you can still run the car on diesel. The only added maintenance is changing an extra oil filter with your normal oil change (about $5, and 3 minutes)

I get my WVO free from local restaurants, which would normally pay to have someone else cart it away, because it’s considered haz mat by the government (the gov’t does actually look out for us from time to time).
The perks are:
•You’re running mostly on free fuel. I drove from NoHo to Baltimore (400 mi), and only used maybe 1/2 gal of diesel, if that. That means my cost was the equivalent of getting 800mpg diesel at $2.89/gal.
•People claim that their engines run smoother on WVO, and that it causes even less wear than diesel.
•WVO has less emissions than diesel or gasoline (check Greasecar for the numbers).
•As I wrote above, WVO is a hazardous material, which I’m disposing of in a safe way.
•Then there are all of the socio-political implications of relying so much less on petroleum.

The downsides:
•You have to filter the grease yourself, which would be difficult if you lived in an apartment building in the city. I have a backyard of sorts, so it’s a bit easier. You don’t want to be spilling waste vegetable oil (WVO) in your
apartment.
•Potentially spilling grease in your trunk, where the tank is. There are solutions to this, but I’d say it takes a bit of thinking/practice.
•Lost trunk space. You’re carrying an extra 13-15 gallon tank. My tank fits where my spare tire goes, but now my spare is in my trunk. The benefit of doing this is that I don’t need to get to the tank (because I have a fill tube), and my spare is still accessible. This was a wash for me, because the Jetta has a significantly larger trunk than my Volvo did.
•I’ve heard of people getting pulled over in the South because they’re “not paying road taxes.” These are just stories I’ve heard, and there’s the simple solution of not advertising that it’s a greasecar (they give you a window sticker).
•If you have the manual diesel/WVO switchover kit, there’s risk of leaving WVO in your lines to congeal.

I crunched some numbers using the costs in his email, and figuring an average 43 mpg normally and 12,000 miles a year, with diesel at $2.89, it would take about 2.75 years to break even. By five years you’ve saved $1,700. This is all assuming that the cost of diesel stays the same. If you drive more than 12,000 miles a year or the price of diesel goes up, you’d recoup your initial costs much more quickly.

I also like his list of pros and cons. According to Greasecar, vegetable oil fuel emits 26% less carbon monoxide and 39% less particulate matter. That’s a big environmental savings. It sounds like the biggest negative at this point is having to filter the grease, which could be a real limit for people without the space.

What are your reasons for considering whether or not to do this? If you have done this, I’d love to hear about how it’s been.

-zot

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