My only beef with Loretta the Jetta (I named my car, I know, I’m a dork) is that the warranty only covers using up to B5 (5% biodiesel). I would like to at least be able to use B20, and there’s a local biodiesel collective that makes B100 from waste veggie oil that I’d love to support. But I don’t want to void my warranty. Hopefully with more testing, VW will up the ante and allow the use of B20 or more without voiding the warranty.

I am stoked about my new “volksvegan”, it’s nice to have a VW that’s reliable and luxurious (my other VW is a 1982 Diesel Vanagon that runs on veg oil, and needless to say it’s been in the shop way too much for our liking). Go VW!

My only beef with Loretta the Jetta (I named my car, I know, I’m a dork) is that the warranty only covers using up to B5 (5% biodiesel). I would like to at least be able to use B20, and there’s a local biodiesel collective that makes B100 from waste veggie oil that I’d love to support. But I don’t want to void my warranty. Hopefully with more testing, VW will up the ante and allow the use of B20 or more without voiding the warranty.

I am stoked about my new “volksvegan”, it’s nice to have a VW that’s reliable and luxurious (my other VW is a 1982 Diesel Vanagon that runs on veg oil, and needless to say it’s been in the shop way too much for our liking). Go VW!

My only beef with Loretta the Jetta (I named my car, I know, I’m a dork) is that the warranty only covers using up to B5 (5% biodiesel). I would like to at least be able to use B20, and there’s a local biodiesel collective that makes B100 from waste veggie oil that I’d love to support. But I don’t want to void my warranty. Hopefully with more testing, VW will up the ante and allow the use of B20 or more without voiding the warranty.

I am stoked about my new “volksvegan”, it’s nice to have a VW that’s reliable and luxurious (my other VW is a 1982 Diesel Vanagon that runs on veg oil, and needless to say it’s been in the shop way too much for our liking). Go VW!

Amazing! With all of the trouble Ford is having in the small car market, this would be an atom bomb. It would dominate the small car market even with diesel being more expensive.

Amazing! With all of the trouble Ford is having in the small car market, this would be an atom bomb. It would dominate the small car market even with diesel being more expensive.

Due to some recent advances in making diesels cleaner, there are a whole slew of car makers bringing diesels back to the US this coming year.

Look here for some more details:

http://gas2.org/2008/05/21/clean-diesel-cars-coming-to-us-this-fall-2008-2010-timeline/

As far as I know, the Ford Fiesta Econetic is still off the table for the US.

http://gas2.org/2008/09/09/new-fiesta-gets-73-mpg-but-ford-says-its-not-for-the-us/

Couple of points:

-As much as possible, we shouldn’t be using petroleum to fuel cars at all. Biodiesel would be a much better option with lower emissions and a neutral (or net sink) carbon balance – especially something like algae diesel. Biodiesel from algae or even a crop like canola is a much better source of biofuel than ethanol, so the more diesel cars we can encourage on the road means a better potential market for biodiesel. Plus, diesel cars tend to last far longer than gas cars so you would have less raw material usage over the life of the car.

-When a barrel of oil is turned into a petroleum product such as gas, diesel, plastics or fertilizer, none of the barrel is wasted (meaning that extra amount of petroleum used to make diesel doesn’t just disappear). Your statistics take the issue out of context.