Kicking the gas habit: baby steps

I was about $30 into my fill-up when the biodiesel Smartcar zipped into the station.

Out stepped a woman wearing a smile that said she had been freed of something.Worry about how high gas prices may climb (They've gone up 7 cents in the last two weeks). Guilt about what our driving is doing to the environment. Wonder about why we can't seem to give up our beloved big chunks of metal, like she did.

"I hardly have to stop and fill up at all," the woman told me as I peered at the total on her pump: $18.12. Mine: $68.92.

This is madness. It's why Mayor Greg Nickels wants gas-powered taxis to eventually be replaced by hybrids. And it's why we all need to explore any way we might wean ourselves off the gas pump.

And it's why there's a monthlong wait for Chris Goodwin's "Frybrid" conversion kits.

The kits (they sell for $1,500 to $3,000, depending on the car) allow diesel-powered cars to burn used vegetable oil that owners can get for free from restaurants, and filter at home.

Goodwin, 44, designed and started selling the conversion kits from his Capitol Hill shop in 2000. Now that gas prices are closing in on $4 a gallon, "the phone is ringing off the hook," he said Monday.

The kits can be installed at home, over a weekend, and use waste vegetable oil from restaurants. There's a lot more to it — carbon atoms, glycerin, your eyes glazing over. Put simply, the conversion kit heats the vegetable oil, allowing it to be more completely combusted in the engine.

Goodwin is scary-smart, as big as a biker-bar bouncer and a complete pushover when it comes to his 5-year-old girl.

He owns "more cars than Avis," including a 40-foot Mercedes bus that he has painstakingly converted into a Frybrid motor home.

Earlier this month, he testified before the state Senate in favor of a bill, which would exclude waste vegetable oil from the special fuel tax. (It passed).

Of course, with every great advancement, there's got to be a rub or two.

The use of waste vegetable oil has not been tested by the EPA. It would simply cost too much to have every engine on the road certified to use it, Goodwin said.

And we just wouldn't be able to make enough vegetable oil to run every car in America.

Say all the 275 million arable acres in the U.S. were planted with nothing but soy for the production of soy oil to be used as fuel. It would offset our dependence on oil by just 14 percent — and the country would be starving to death.

"It is not a reality and it will never be," Goodwin said. "We do not have enough land to grow us out of our consumption."

But there's hope, he said. Scientists are working on getting alternative fuel from plants and algae.

In the meantime, and if you drive a diesel, you can buy a conversion kit and befriend a restaurant owner with a busy fryer, Goodwin said.

"But if you're only driving a few miles a day and back," he said, "you should probably be taking a bus, or even walk. It will be good for you."

Nicole Brodeur's column appears Tuesday and Friday. Reach her at 206-464-2334 or nbrodeur@seattletimes.com.

Why do you think they call them Smartcars?