City Snapshot: Greasecar
A sign of the times. I saw this car parked on my street today advertising that it's powered by vegetable oil. I'm sure you've heard about this "technology." It's nothing new however since apparently it's been known for years that most diesel engines can operate on vegetable oil. But only recently are people starting to become hip to the fact. I'm no car afficianado, but the car pictured here appears to be an early '80s diesel engine Mercedes. This line was introduced in response to the gas crunch of the '70s. (Interesting how we seem to go in circles on this issue.) Usage of the vegetable oil fuel source is still pretty rare in this country. In fact I don't even know anyone who actually has one of these cars. It seems only the occasional environmentally conscious celebrity who you ever hear of fueling their cars up at fast food joints with french fry grease instead of gas from gas stations. Country Music legend Willy Nelson is a huge proponent of the alternative fuel source and all of his tour buses and trucks are operated this way. He has even started his own brand of the stuff: check out BioWillie.
This seems like such a simple answer to our years of worry over foreign fuel sources. In fact it's almost too simple, is there a piece to this I'm missing? Why aren't we doing this? Oh, right, big oil in the White House. Check out greasecar.com for more details on how to make vegetable fuel work for you.
Labels: City Snapshots
posted by Michael @ 8:28 PM
6 Comments:
I suddenly have a craving for Chinese food!
oh my parents have an old Mercedes 300D. I should tell them about this. i had no idea
I think I'd rather drive around smelling french fries than gasoline exhaust ... now I'm hungry.
It's a very novel concept, especially since this country seems to be drowning in used fast food grease/oil. If only you didn't have to filter and clean the grease prior to using it. That seems very messy.
Better in our cars than our arteries, I always say.
hey that's really cool! Thanks for showing that Michael
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