I’ve always been interested in powering vehicles using fuels other than gasoline. Every mile I drive in the electric conversion is more enjoyable because of the energy source. I’ve been a fan of electric vehicles long before I was a fan of vegetable oil (SVO) cars, actually there was a point where I thought SVO vehicles were a waste time and resources. Here is how I became a vegetable oil vehicle fan and my plans for the future.
While on the 2001 and 2002 Tour De Sol with TeamEV I ran into a few teams with waste vegetable oil vehicles and biodiesel vehicles. Honestly I have to say that I was less than impressed with the idea. I was looking at electric vehicles as a new way to drive, they are clean , they are quite, they are efficient, why would someone want to burn vegetable oil? Maybe it was because I had focused on electric vehicles that I was a little biased, I’ve also never been a huge chemistry guru and mixing chemicals is not my first idea for a good time, maybe the word transesterification was too scary to deal with, whatever the reason, neither SVO nor biodiesel really interested me.
At the beginning of my career I moved to southern California for a job and ended up commuting 20 miles each way to work. Driving 20 miles to work isn’t a big deal, got me home in 30-40 minutes. This was in 2007, right when gas prices shot through the roof and I remember paying over $4.50 a gallon more than once. Driving 40 miles a day was costing me about $30 a week in my little 28 mpg Jetta. The electric car would have been great to have, $1 a day in energy, top down all year long in SoCal, everything is within a short drive, lots of incentives to own an EV, etc. However, the car was on the east coast and the cost of getting it out to California would out weighed any benefit from saved gas. Plus, while work was only 20 miles away and within range, there were major highways on which even the slower lane was moving at 70 MPH, mix in SoCal traffic and it is not the best. I think I could have done it but it would have been pushing it. This really underscored the range limitation of electric vehicles, at least those with lead-acid batteries, and started me thinking about other options.
This is where vegetable oil and biodiesel come in. A vehicle that uses SVO and or biodiesel can still use regular petrodiesel which means that anything you can do with a diesel you can do with SVO/biodiesel. Want to drive across the country? No problem. Biodiesel and SVO also cover some major desires from sustainable energy vehicle owners; the range cap is very high, refuel in a short time, not cost an arm and a leg for fuel (or 100% free), and do not generate much pollution.
These realizations made me start looking into SVO systems and donor vehicles. I don’t have a SVO vehicle yet, but am looking to replace my main vehicle with diesel modified to run SVO. While I plan on using this site to share results of using an electric car, I also plan on using the site for any developments in my SVO project. Here are some questions I aim to answer with an SVO car:
- Do you get better mileage with SVO?
- What other benefits do you see with SVO?
- Is the fuel really free?
- If the fuel is free, how do you make sure it will run and how much does that cost?
- Is the filter process a mess?
- Is it worth my time?
That last one might be a little hard to answer but I will try, haha. Most of these questions are ones that I have and figured a few people out there might have too.
For more information on biofuels, check out the Biodiesel and SVO page and also visit again for updates and other info on EV and bio-fuel vehicles!