Entries Tagged as ''

Price sensitivity of alternative fuels

Posted on April 10th, 2009 by DanR Admin

I want to share a reader comment on the WVO Retailers Suspending Service post.

We have a company in Southern California that collects, filters and sells WVO and were also surprised at the price sensitivity our customers have for this product. For all of the environmental purist rhetoric it apparently still comes down to money talks for far to many folks. It’s enough to make me want to rethink our business model. Let someone else fight the global warming problem.

In my experience, this is sad but true. There is a core of vegcar (and other alternative fueled vehicle) owners who are willing to pay a little more to help reduce their carbon footprint. Putting green (energy) ahead of green (backs), if you will. Most people, however, are motivated by price. This is why I believe that we are only going to see significant change in energy consumption in this country, when one of the following happens:

  • Gasoline is back above $4 per gallon
  • Alternative fuels become cheaper than gas/diesel at the pump
  • The air is no longer breathable
Categories: 300d, Misc., cold start, diesel, svo, taxes, wvo // Add Comment »

Automakers still don’t get it.

Posted on April 10th, 2009 by DanR Admin
It is pretty sad that the auto industry is designing new SUVs, some of them V8’s! This is from today’s story in the New York Times on the New York Auto Show.

The roughly $85,000 BMW X6 M is a four-passenger 4,800-pound crossover with a thirsty 555-horsepower V-8 engine — hardly the stuff a greener, more modest future. And while Mercedes offered rides to reporters in its ML450 hybrid S.U.V., which goes on sale in December, it also unveiled a new E63 AMG supersedan with a 518-horsepower V-8.

It seems to me, the automakers are going to continue missing the boat. Refreshingly, there was one paragraph about efficient diesel cars.

Diesels, which are high-mileage rivals to hybrids, generated interest with VW’s announcement that it would sell a diesel Golf with real-world highway figures in excess of 50 miles a gallon, and with Mercedes’s plan to consider frugal 4-cylinder diesels in larger luxury cars sold in America.

Categories: Mercedes Benz, News, diesel // Add Comment »

WVO Retailers Suspending Service

Posted on April 7th, 2009 by DanR Admin

For the past 3 years, I have been buying filtered WVO from Sphere Energy, a San Luis Obispo company. I contacted them last week and they said that business is very slow. They said that oil is not worth enough to cover filtering costs, so they are selling it all to a big biodiesel company. I also came across a blog post at Arctic Vegwerks that an Alaska WVO retailer has also suspended retail sales.

I’m going to contact Sphere again. There has to be a price at which it is feasible for them to filter oil. It might be a high price but I for one would be willing to pay a bit more for WVO than the current price of diesel at the pump. I don’t think I am alone in this, either.

Categories: wvo // 2 Comments »

Mercedes 300D Odometer – FIXED!

Posted on April 5th, 2009 by DanR Admin

I bought my 1984 300D almost 4 years ago. I bought the car with 198,000 miles on the odometer. A few months later, the odometer stopped working at around 204,000 miles. It worked intermittently before stopping completely.

Last week I had the odometer repaired. The mechanic gave me a tip that I want to share with everyone. He said that I should never hit the reset button on the trip odometer, when the car is moving. I had done this many times, especially when the odemeter worked some of the time. He said that when you hold the reset button in, it can strip the plastic gears.

Categories: 300d, Mercedes Benz // Add Comment »