Grease VS Electrons

[Mike Dabrowski 2000]

On the way back from the Hybridfest I stopped at an old friends in the Buffalo area. I met him at his office, then followed him for his normal hourly commute to his home. He drove pretty fast averaging 65-75 on the highway, and not much less on the back roads. He drives a VW TDI diesel station wagon that he has converter to run on Veg OIL that he collects from local restaurants.
He gets 48-50 MPG on the stuff. I followed him at the same speeds, and got about 61 MPG. Pretty impressive MPG for a grease powered car. We will work on making a conversion for our home heating furnace.

[originalbadbob]

I wonder what the weight difference is between the two cars and what the wheel/tire weight difference is as well. A friend of mine has a TDI coupe and regularly gets 50mpg on regular diesel.
I came close to getting one of those, but opted for my Insight.
I'll bet he was running his air conditioning too.
robert

[Mike Dabrowski 2000]

We both were running air, it was in the 90's
The car was a station wagon, so it must have weighed 2500or more.
I was having a hard time keeping up, and I did not have the Boost batteries in the car.

[eastender43]

VW diesels are really obnoxious polluters....when you ride a bike,you notice these things...There was one at our campground at Acadia....the diesel smog hung in the air for 5 minutes after they drove by...I know the newest ones are much better,but they are still not environmentally friendly,even though they get great mileage....

Farmers around here run them on farm diesel,thus saving the road tax fees....cheaper yet....but cheap ain't the whole story...

[nemystic]

Eastender wrote:

"VW diesels are really obnoxious polluters....when you ride a bike,you notice these things".

I agree with your comment. Because of a "medical" condition, I am hyper-sensitive to diesel exhaust, and in fact, partially disabled by it; which presents a safety risk when I'm commuting on the bicycle on a narrow road with trucks passing.

However, I think if you took a whiff of the output from a biodiesel you might agree that it smells a bit more like tempura or perhaps onion rings.

I'm not suggesting that biodiesels are "environmentally friendly", but they are kinder to the olfactory system than their petrolium based counterparts.

[Insightful Trekker]

Originally Posted by nemystic

However, I think if you took a whiff of the output from a biodiesel you might agree that it smells a bit more like tempura or perhaps onion rings.

Here in Knoxville the mass transit authority (if you can call it that compaired to most cities of similar size in the NE) has a few biodiesel busses.

But our's smell more like french fries. Hmmm...