i believe it was cheaper because of petroleum prices and the amount of fish and chips consumed in the United Kingdom

Ah yes, nothing like having some jolly good fish and chips at your local chippy. Brilliant!

"the amount of fish and chips consumed in the UK" is hilarious. I think fuel prices are higher in the UK, at least they are in other parts of Europe.. but maybe the UK's oil supply keeps prices down. In Arizona, from that article, "The price for a gallon of biodiesel for the private consumer can be rather expensive. When bought through a biodiesel provider it is often well over $2 per gallon. However, since the city bids out for fuel, it is able to buy biodiesel for a mere 8 cents more per gallon than regular diesel." But at least price isn't the only factor for a lot of people interested in alternative fuel, as the relatively higher prices for hybrid/electric cars has shown. It takes on the order of a decade to get the extra cost back as savings.

At least this type of fuel is something we can grow ourselves rather than doing nasty things in other parts of the world to get. But other than crops like soy I wonder what about hemp oil?

Also, I know that Ann Arbor gets grants to test out biodiesel fuel in their vehicles. Currently, the city as well as the university have fleets of hybrid vehicles. Together they are a big consumer of fuel, so competitively priced biodiesel should be important to their bottom line.

I know that awhile back some college kids (from another school) converted a bus or some other large vehicle to run on biodiesel and they toured crosscountry stopping at restaurants to reup on free fuel along the way. I thought that was pretty sweet. They didn't have to pay anything for the oil.

One last thing, what car makers sell diesel engines anymore? I know VW does...

What I found most interesting about the Wales article is that the engines were unmodified, yet worked just fine with the diesel / cooking oil mixture. Is any modification even needed to run on biodiesel?

As far as diesel cars go -- I think plenty of companies still make them, they just don't make them for the US. Go overseas where fuel is much more expensive and you will see more diesel powered vehicles.

http://www.dieselcar.com/data.html

When cars run on hemp oil they generally travel slow and get lost.

I knew they were still commonplace in Europe, and I know that at least VW sells them here in the states. I also see gas stations here that sell diesel, although rarely, so there must be some demand at least.

I remember some modification had to be made to this bus or whatever. It was probably something for accomodating the use of oil that had already been used for cooking.

Hmm, what if you could pay your bus fare with a pint of spent cooking oil instead of cash? Not practical, but maybe it would be somewhere. Maybe on Mars.

But hybrids dont' save you that much, because once you start seeing a return on the investment via fuel savings, the batteries start to go. And they are big batteries. But they are still good for the air and all.

Let's double the price of gas in the United States at gas stations only.