As I have mentioned previously, I travel frequently for work and rent cars wherever I go. I usually book the car through Hotwire.com and rent the lowest priced midsized or smaller car. Almost every time I get to the rental desk I ask if they have any hybrid vehicles. They usually say, “No, but we get asked that a lot.” They seem to have gotten the point.

On Tuesday, when I returned my car to Avis at Ontario (California) airport, I couldn’t believe the site that presented itself. There were four, brand-spanking new Prius cars.

Let’s reinforce the message and continue to request and actually rent these hybrid cars. By the way, every time I rent from Avis, I get 5 free iTunes.

I received the following comment on my April 29th post. She wrote:

What happens to your mileage (miles per gallon) and net emissions when you figure in the energy expended (fossil fuel or otherwise) to deliver the filtered WVO to your door?

It is a great question. I don’t have an exact answer as far as net emissions and my mileage, adjusted for the delivery. But how many Americans really know their true efficiency or pollution for any fuel? How much energy is consumed extracting the oil, delivering it half-way around the world, refining it, delivering it to the stations etc. And how many deaths and injustices are committed in the process of bringing petroleum to our gas tank?

In my case, the guy who delivers the oil, runs his truck on biodiesel. He trades filtered wvo to the biodiesel makers for the fuel. Ian drove approximately 350 miles round-trip in his Powerstroke Diesel. I’m guessing (conservatively) that he got an average of 10 miles per gallon on the trip. That means that he used 35 gallons to deliver 1,000 gallons to us.

It is difficult to calculate exactly how much energy and emissions are attributable to producing and burning one gallon of diesel fuel or vegetable oil. The information that I have read, indicates that it isn’t even close. The process of growing plants removes carbon from the air. Some of that carbon goes back into the air when it is burned in a vegcar. Petroleum takes 100 of the carbon out of the ground where it is sequestered. Then, when it is burned, a good deal of carbon is released into the air. The net effect is that vegetable oil has a much smaller impact on the airborne carbon.

I read something else recently that was very interesting. The energy required to build a new car is tremendous. This guy’s assertion was that to save the energy that went into producing a new Prius, one would have to drive that prius several hundred thousand miles compared to buying a used car that had mileage in the mid 20’s. I love Prius’s and am not knocking them. I am just pointing out that the whole story is a big and complicated one.

If anyone has seen any data on this, please send it along.

Documentary filmmaker Trish Dalton has made a spot about how, “Students at The Automotive High School in Brooklyn convert a diesel car into one that runs on grease from their cafeteria.”

heck out her site here.

I know this is late notice, but any of you who are within a couple of hours of Livingston, CA (in the central valley near Turlock) come on out to the Heartland Festival. There will be music, food, great information on organic farming and swimming in the Merced River. Click here for directions.

There will be at least 2 or 3 vegcars there.