Los Angeles Drivers Put Cars on a Veggie Diet for Cleaner Air

Los Angeles Drivers Put Cars on a Veggie Diet for Cleaner Air
Bloomberg - USA
... those trying to drive cleaner. She fills her 1983 Chevrolet El Camino with vegetable-based biodiesel fuel. At traffic stops around ...

March 23 (Bloomberg) -- The environmentally hip of Los Angeles are moving
beyond Toyota Motor Corp.'s gas-electric Prius to cars that may use no fossil
fuels at all.

Actress Daryl Hannah, star of the 1984 movie ``Splash,'' is among those
trying to drive cleaner. She fills her 1983 Chevrolet El Camino with
vegetable-based biodiesel fuel. At traffic stops around the city, the smell of
french fries emanates from 1980s Mercedes-Benz cars altered to run on vegetable
oil.

The celebrities and local entrepreneurs embracing vegetable- based fuels may
be pointing automakers including Toyota and Volkswagen AG toward the future.
Their switch may be copied by other motorists in Los Angeles, which tends to be
on the leading edge of trends that go statewide. The shift also could help clean
up the skies of Los Angeles, the smoggiest U.S. city last year.

``With movie stars endorsing this, demand may go up,'' Phil Gott, director of
automotive consulting at Global Insight Inc., an economic forecasting company in
Lexington, Massachusetts, said in an interview. ``It may cause vehicle
manufacturers to offer a broader range of cars.''

Biodiesel can range from fuels based on 100 percent vegetable or animal fats,
thinned with alcohol, to fuels containing as much as 90 percent petroleum
products, under California's classification. Hannah's El Camino uses B100, which
usually is derived from soybeans and other crops and can be used in diesel
engines without modification.

Burning Oil

Actress Mandy Moore, 21, had her car adapted to run on pure vegetable oil or
the filtered leftovers from restaurant deep fryers, said Brian Friedman, owner
of LoveCraftBioFuels in Los Angeles, the only company in the area that
specializes in converting diesel engines to run on vegetable oil, which is
thicker.

``It's crazy right now,'' Friedman said. ``I can't take half the business
that comes in. Every month, business at least doubles, sometimes even
quadruples.''

Friedman, 40, said he already has converted 200 cars this year. He did only
100 cars in the first three years he offered the service. He charges $700 to
modify a Mercedes, the most popular choice, and about $1,500 for other autos.
The alterations include a heating device and a filter for particles.

``People are taking us seriously now,'' said Friedman, who formerly owned a
tattoo parlor. ``People are realizing that every headline you hear is about the
oil industry, the economy, pollution and fuel prices.''

Biodiesel Buses

Musicians also are on board. Country singers Willie Nelson, 72, and Bonnie
Raitt, 56, tour the country in biodiesel-powered buses, according to their Web
sites. Nelson even markets his own fuel, called BioWillie, through Willie Nelson
Biodiesel Co.

Supporters of vegetable-based fuels cite a range of benefits: cleaner air,
less need for crude oil and helping family farmers who might grow crops for
fuel.

``This topic of biodiesel is just a means to start opening people's minds,''
Hannah, 45, said in an interview. ``You don't have to be a tree-hugger to want
to get off of our dependence on foreign oil.''
It wouldn't be the first time
that Los Angeles influenced driver behavior across the country.

omedian Sandra Bernhard, 50, actor George Clooney, 44, and other stars helped
popularize the Prius in Southern California before sales jumped nationally. Last
year, Toyota City, Japan-based Toyota sold 12,630 of the $22,000 cars in the
greater Los Angeles area, more than 12 percent of total U.S. sales, spokesman
Sam Bhutto said.

Air Quality

The city has a long history of air-quality problems. It opened an
air-pollution bureau in 1945, two years before the state's Air Pollution Control
Act. Last year, the air in Los Angeles exceeded federal ozone standards on 84
days from May to September, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

The city's smog helped prompt the federal government in 1973 to allow
California to set its own emissions standards, which are the strictest in the
nation. Amendments to the federal Clean Air Act in 1990 were based on
California's law, and the state still requires cleaner gasoline and diesel fuel
than other U.S. states.

California's new-car market is so big -- 13 percent of U.S. sales in 2005 --
that automakers often build their vehicles to conform to the state's rules.
Engineers from Toyota, Japan's biggest carmaker, and Tokyo-based Honda Motor
Co., No. 3, have said that California's push to require all-electric cars
spurred development of hybrids in the 1990s.

Volkswagen, based in Wolfsburg, Germany, sells diesel models in the U.S. that
are warranted for use with fuel having as much as 5 percent vegetable content.
The company is working with Decatur, Illinois-based Archer-Daniels-Midland Co.
on testing fuels with higher vegetable content, said Marijke Smith, Volkswagen's
public affairs manager in Washington.

While users' intentions may be good, some critics say biodiesel isn't
necessarily helping the environment.

Out-of-Date Equipment

No new diesel-powered cars are sold in California because they can't meet
emission standards, California Air Resources Board spokeswoman Gennet Paauwe
said. The cars using biodiesel are older models, meaning they don't have the
latest emissions technology and aren't subject to state testing.

Retail sales of biodiesel fuels are regulated in California and limited to
B20, which has 20 percent vegetable oil. It costs about 5 cents to 10 cents a
gallon more than regular diesel fuel, according to Willie Nelson Biodiesel.
Diesel averaged $2.80 a gallon in Southern California as of March 15, the
California Energy Commission said. The pump price of regular-grade gasoline was
$2.63 in mid-March, according to the Automobile Club of Southern California.

B100 is made by individuals or cooperatives rather than sold through stores.
The content of homemade fuels can vary and isn't regulated. Drivers can buy
filtering kits to recycle restaurant deep-fryer oil. Some make their own
biodiesel using vegetable oil, lye and alcohol.

``Right now it's a little scary, because anybody can brew biodiesel in their
garage,'' Paauwe said. ``You don't know what it's made of.''

To contact the reporter on this story:
Nadja Brandt in Los Angeles at nbrandt@bloomberg.net.