Since you probably don’t go through gallons of it at home, people get used oil from restaurants who cook up all those french fries and tasty other fried foods.

And waste vegetable oil? With a little modification, you can run a diesel engine on vegetable oil like you use to cook at home. What is biodiesel? It’s just diesel fuel that comes from vegetable oil or animal fat oil, as opposed to coming from petroleum (the regular stuff we dig up from underground and also where gasoline comes from).

diesel cars that can run on biodiesel or relatively easily modified to run on waste vegetable oilĬars with diesel engines are interesting because of those different options they give you, and since they’re generally more efficient than those that run on gasoline.

fully electric cars (again, a very limited amount are available in the US, but maybe this will expand someday).

hybrid electric cars (that run on a combination of gasoline and stored energy in batteries).

cars that run on compressed natural gas (common in buses, but for cars only one or two brands are available in the US).

flex-fuel vehicles (which are designed to run both gasoline and another fuel like ethanol).

Where to begin? How about with, “What are my options when it comes to driving around without using gas?” Like with so many other questions, I looked to my old friend Wikipedia at this article on alternative fuel vehicles.

What would it take to get us off gas and onto biodiesel or another alternative fuel choice?

I live in a city and rely on biking, walking and public transportation for most of my getting-around-town needs, but my wife does have a car that we use, especially when we want to get out of town. Reading this month’s Farmer Hero story about a farmer making biodiesel on his farm from sunflower seeds got me thinking about using something besides 87-octane unleaded gasoline as fuel myself.

Vw t6 can it run on biodiesel