A few months ago, Eco Dad bought this humongous truck against my advice to wait for more fuel efficient models or for Toyota’s plug-in hybrids to be released. He needs a full size pick up for work, so this was the answer. My point was that now is not the time to buy a vehicle. I predict in the next 5 to 10 years, something has to change in the car industry. But then, Eco Dad proved me wrong and started running biodiesel in the big rig! We are lucky to live in an area where there are two local gas stations selling 99% pure biodiesel. The price for biodiesel has fluctuated from costing a little more than regular diesel to costing a little less. I won’t pretend to be an expert on peak oil issues, but I think that using biodiesel is something that we can do right now while we wait and wait for our government to do something. Biodiesel is not the answer to all our problems, as land is converted to grow crops for fuel rather than food. Reports of deforestation to grow biofuels are surfacings, as well as Fidel Castro has come out against its use. If you own a diesel vehicle, you can switch to biodiesel without doing anything to your car/truck, as long as you buy it from a gas station. No longer is it necessary to make your own by collecting oil from restaurants. The original diesel engine was designed to run on soybean oil, then oil was discovered in North America. The rest is history…..Even Willie Nelson has gotten into the biodiesel action with BioWillie (which is only 20% biofuel based). You can even rent biodiesel cars in LA and Hawaii from Bio-Beetle. For more information about biodiesel, click here. You can also read more about biofuels and deforestation here.