My Vegetable fuel Story
I first learned about the whole biodiesel/veggetable oil about 3 years ago while living in Florida. At the time it was nothing more than a curiosity. This is about the time hurricane Katrina hit and we had a pretty steep gas price spike, guess it was just below 3 bucks at its peak. Anyhow, I reasearched the topic and it was pretty interesting but I just did not have the time to experiment with it. I was especially interested in this Diesel Secret stuff I had come accross on the internet. I think they had just launched the product at the time. I didn't have a diesel car either so I just kind of forgot about the whole thing.
Fast forward to 2008 and as you all know another gas price spike. So I started taking the whole veggie oil powered car a little more serious this time. Now I wasn't about to plunk down $30k for a hybrid which will never pay for itself in terms of savings when compared to something like a Yaris. Sorry folks, you don't really save money buying one. So I started doing my reasearch and found that the old school early to mid 80s Mercedes 300 Diesels were the perfect candidate for running veggie oil. So I started searching for a decently priced MB 300. After doing some initial searches, it was clear I wasn't going to find a decent one for under $3K. I wish I would have gotten one back in 2005, probably would have gotten it for half the price. Of course by now the secret is out and the price gougers are out en-force. Luckily I found one on Ebay in my area for about $3k so I took the plunge and got it. Here is the car:
Ever since these things came out, I have thought that they were
nothing more than a marketing ploy. Even now with rising gas prices, it is absolutely ridiculous to me that people are buying so many.
I mean, they aren't cheap. I think the base model Prius goes for like $25k. Comparing this to say a Yaris which is only like $12k. Lets
see how much money the Prius owner will save.
The base model Prius owner is already in the hole $13k vs the Yaris owner. So the car needs to save them $13k worth of gas. For simplicities sake
we won't take into account the financing and all that jazz. Say the Prius guy gets 50MPG and the Yaris guy gets 35 mpg. Suppose both have to drive
500 miles each week and each car takes 10 gallons (I know it's alot and the fuel capacities are probably off but makes it easier on the calculations).
Then the Yaris guy has to buy an extra 4.5 gallons to drive the same mileage. At $4 a gallon he spends an extra $18 a week so in a year he will spend roughly an
extra $1000, so for the Prius guy to make up the differerance, he will need to drive for about 13 years to even make up the difference! Even with gas at $8 it would take him almost 7 years to make up the differance. Of course by then
he will need new batteries. So it doesn't make much sense to buy one over something like the Yaris in my mind. At least not at current prices. Yet their owners love to brag about how they get 50 MPG and are saving all kinds of money!