NC will give you a big fine for bio-diesel use.

didn't someone pay tax on the vegi oil in the first place ? I'm sure a business has factored in the 'cost' of the oil as a consumable in producing their end product ? Therefor as a prepaired food product the consumer who purchased the deep fired pork rinds would have paid sales tax. Much in the same way we pay sales tax at the pump. Someone on the back end sorts out who gets what for thier cut..

That said I do agree that this does need to get sorted out as. What happens when your charging your electric car at home ? Even if you only partially run on the electricity? You are suplimenting your power much in the same way as bio/wvo etc..

just my .02
 
yager said:
I do agree that this does need to get sorted out as. What happens when your charging your electric car at home ? Even if you only partially run on the electricity? You are suplimenting your power much in the same way as bio/wvo etc..

just my .02
Click to expand...

I like that. I also like the idea of not paying for fuel.

But what kind of horrible person would do that.

But I could not hate or have a problem with him, heck I think thats great. Rock on.
 
yager said:
didn't someone pay tax on the vegi oil in the first place ? I'm sure a business has factored in the 'cost' of the oil as a consumable in producing their end product ? Therefor as a prepaired food product the consumer who purchased the deep fired pork rinds would have paid sales tax. Much in the same way we pay sales tax at the pump. Someone on the back end sorts out who gets what for thier cut..

That said I do agree that this does need to get sorted out as. What happens when your charging your electric car at home ? Even if you only partially run on the electricity? You are suplimenting your power much in the same way as bio/wvo etc..

just my .02
Click to expand...

Yag, you don't make any goddamn sense.

Straight-up veggie oil from the grocery store is subject to no tax... sales or otherwise. It's food.

It's also a bad idea on the macro level to run virgin vegetable oil in automobiles. Waste veggie is one thing, but virgin just pushes up the price of food. Look what E15 and E85 have done to the price of corn, soybeans, and meat. And just like all these other feel-good hippiebullshit fawktehayrabs schemes, it ends up hitting poor people harder than anybody else. People mistakenly think they're saving the planet. Instead, they're starving their neighbors.
 
Everybody here seems to have missed the news that the NC legislature is seriously considering dropping the bond requirement for us private non-commercial users and all other users under x (can't remember) number of gallons per year. Was in the local paper a few days back, so it must be old news now.
 
So if the new electric cars charge themselves when they hit the brakes how is the gov't getting there road tax..from the little bit of gas purchased.. ??

Well if you run a diesel vehicle on WVO you still have to start/stop on diesel so you are still paying a small amount of road tax to fill the existing fuel tank.. what is the difference in these two scenarios??
 
I've always thought that gas taxes were a pretty fair way to get people to pay for highway construction. If somebody drives a light little prius/civic/focus that puts relatively little wear on the road they also pay less in taxes because they burn less fuel. If somebody tows a buggy behind their big diesel rig they put more wear on the road and they pay more in taxes. It also works out nicely for people that drive a lot vs. a little.

To the other poster that mentioned filling up with electricity from the power grid, that makes sense to me. They need to figure out a way to fund the highway from those people just like they do with the bio diesel or WVO guys.

If you want the service while letting somebody else pay for it, that's just stealing. It's so "small time" that I don't really care but there is still a matter of right vs. wrong to deal with.
 
The car companies are paying a huge fee to the fed for the electric cars to cover teh lost use tax, and there is a "Fee" built into the purchase price of said vehicles.

All that said, the giv't. subsidizes the energy saving cars so much it is a wsh for the car companies, and who the hell knows how the individual states are compensated.

I would be interested in how they are enforcing the WVO violations. If I was pulled over how does a LEO prove I was running on veggie?

"No, sir officer. I was running on the diesel in my tank, I switch over to WVO when I am down on my farm or at my hunt club, not on the road."

How is that much different than saying the pane injection kits that can greatly increase gas mileage? There is no road use tax on pane.

One final point. All the talk about road construction really depends on what you see. I agree 100% that contractors who bid gov't projects do have delivery dates and liquidated damages provisions. But they also have the almight CO. And anyone who has done many govt jobs, is well aware of how to CO the LD back out of a job. But I think what was being discussed is the Dept. of Maintenance employees. State Agencies are NOTORIOUS for over staffing jobs. Just look at your local DMV, if that was privatized, lines would shrink and # of employees working would also. Gov't agencies just have too much red tape to terminate and top grade like they should.
 
SkyHiK5 said:
I would be interested in how they are enforcing the WVO violations. If I was pulled over how does a LEO prove I was running on veggie?
"No, sir officer. I was running on the diesel in my tank, I switch over to WVO when I am down on my farm or at my hunt club, not on the road."
.
Click to expand...


When I did all of my research a while back I was told by dmv that merely having it tied into your fuel system was a violation. It did not matter if you were actively using it or not.

That being said I was also told that there is only one person vaguely familiar with these setups and you would have to be very unlucky to get this particular fellow as he rarely patrols.

If you dont beleive me, try to get info on how to legally do this. most govt agencies you conact dont have a clue what your talking about.
 
According to and article I read in the paper on this Guy who got sited. There was some sort of a Sting that was setup to catch users of non Taxed fuel.

My question is can the government stop your car and search the contents with out cause? Is this not an Illegal Search? Now this guy had Stickers that said "running on 100% Veg oil" so I could understand a cause to search.

So if the answer to this is Yes then they can pull any of use over and search us for anything.
 
SkyHiK5 said:
If I was pulled over how does a LEO prove I was running on veggie?
"No, sir officer. I was running on the diesel in my tank, I switch over to WVO when I am down on my farm or at my hunt club, not on the road."
How is that much different than saying the pane injection kits that can greatly increase gas mileage? There is no road use tax on pane.
Click to expand...
Around here, when the IRS was checking diesel tanks, if it wasn't on-road diesel and it was tied to your fuel system, you got a ticket.

And, your propane dealer should be charging road tax if you are using it onroad.
 
:confused:
saf-t scissors said:
Yag, you don't make any goddamn sense.
Straight-up veggie oil from the grocery store is subject to no tax... sales or otherwise. It's food.
It's also a bad idea on the macro level to run virgin vegetable oil in automobiles. Waste veggie is one thing, but virgin just pushes up the price of food. Look what E15 and E85 have done to the price of corn, soybeans, and meat. And just like all these other feel-good hippiebullshit fawktehayrabs schemes, it ends up hitting poor people harder than anybody else. People mistakenly think they're saving the planet. Instead, they're starving their neighbors.
Click to expand...
You should try exiting the bed on the oposite side one morning maybe the negativity will stay there. Your logic is freaking nuts, do poor people not drive their happy ass to work, ride the bus or a taxi? How the hell do you come up with veggi oil hurting poor people? You need to run for some type of government office cause you got the mind set down pat. "fug it, don't try anything else or think outside the box , it'll never work".:confused:
We can grow soybeans and corn...I've yet to run across a crop of crude oil.
I personally quit running WVO because I'm lazy and figure I'll just work a little harder and not travel quite as often, but to the guys who do , more power to you.
 
BIGWOODY said:
I personally quit running WVO because I'm lazy and figure I'll just work a little harder and not travel quite as often, but to the guys who do , more power to you.
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Me too...

...that and I'm saving up to put the P-Pump on the new 24 valve truck...:huggy:

It's quite a bit of work running WVO...some people don't realize it...people come by the shop..."Can you tell me how to run my car/truck on vegetable oil?"...making the car/truck run on grease isn't the hard/time consuming/increddibly messy part...:shaking:
 
BIGWOODY said:
We can grow soybeans and corn...I've yet to run across a crop of crude oil.
Click to expand...

There's an interesting corollary to that. It goes: we can grow soybeans and corn, but not without soaking the ground with thousands of gallons of petroleum-derived fertilizers first.

There is a net energy loss in using corn products as fuel, which is a pretty significant problem, considering that our fundamental concern is one of energy storage and transportation.

It would be cool if those pesky laws of thermodynamics didn't keep ruining our plans to run our cars perpetually on corn oil/algae/water/belly lint/hair clippings. But, such are the laws of physics. Frequently bent, never broken.

The impacts of food price increases on the poor are similarly indisputable. I think I can speak on behalf of all the poor folk out there in saying that they would rather have something to eat than get to drive to work.

The real irony is that we have people in this thread simultaneously arguing in favor of expanded veggie-derived oil sources (in hopes of fawking Uncle Sam out of his tax money), while pushing a fuel that gets more subsidies than anything else on the market. Talk about politicians. Yeah, let's promise something for nothing and instead provide nothing that costs a whole, whole lot of somethings. And really, that's the biggest issue we're facing. There aren't any economists or physicists in politics. Those that the government chooses to consult in matters such as these are self-interested thanks to the manner in which research grants are distributed and the politicization of science that results.
 
saf-t scissors said:
It would be cool if those pesky laws of thermodynamics didn't keep ruining our plans to run our cars perpetually on corn oil/algae/water/belly lint/hair clippings. But, such are the laws of physics.
Click to expand...
Those physicists don't know jack about thermo. :flipoff2:
 
saf-t scissors said:
There's an interesting corollary to that. It goes: we can grow soybeans and corn, but not without soaking the ground with thousands of gallons of petroleum-derived fertilizers first.
Click to expand...

Some one better tell the folks wwho lived for 1500 years prior to about 1.5-2 centuries ago that it is IMPOSSIBLE to grow crop without "petroleum based fertilizer"

I honestly question this at all. When I lived in Kansas and worked on a professional farm (275,000 acres) the only fertilizer they used was animal byproduct, mostly bought from turkey houses.

Granted it may take a little longer, and the crops may grow a little slower, but its still feasible.

The argument of net fuel is lost when you start talking about burning WASTE oil. You know the stuff that is disposed of and used to make dog food, if we dont run it in trucks.

Strictly ethanol, you have a point not WVO.
BUT even the conversion is a net positive on ethanol, we just do not have enough proccessing stations, nor a refined enough process to make it feasible on the ground. The actual chemical process is a HUGE net win. Harvesting tons of crop and then transporting it 1000 miles to a conversion facility isnt efficient
 
One more point about ethanol.

The govt currently pays over 500million per year in subsidies for farms to burn unbought crops.

The fertilizer is still used, the crops are still grown, and they are then burned. This portion ( albeit small) would have a positive impact on the countries net fuel consumption.
 
saf-t scissors said:
There's an interesting corollary to that. It goes: we can grow soybeans and corn, but not without soaking the ground with thousands of gallons of petroleum-derived fertilizers first.

There is a net energy loss in using corn products as fuel, which is a pretty significant problem, considering that our fundamental concern is one of energy storage and transportation.

It would be cool if those pesky laws of thermodynamics didn't keep ruining our plans to run our cars perpetually on corn oil/algae/water/belly lint/hair clippings. But, such are the laws of physics. Frequently bent, never broken.

The impacts of food price increases on the poor are similarly indisputable. I think I can speak on behalf of all the poor folk out there in saying that they would rather have something to eat than get to drive to work.

The real irony is that we have people in this thread simultaneously arguing in favor of expanded veggie-derived oil sources (in hopes of fawking Uncle Sam out of his tax money), while pushing a fuel that gets more subsidies than anything else on the market. Talk about politicians. Yeah, let's promise something for nothing and instead provide nothing that costs a whole, whole lot of somethings. And really, that's the biggest issue we're facing. There aren't any economists or physicists in politics. Those that the government chooses to consult in matters such as these are self-interested thanks to the manner in which research grants are distributed and the politicization of science that results.
Click to expand...


The highlighted words sure do get the point accross...:popcorn:
 
there is a net energy loss in using crude oil as fuel, there is less net loss in converting grain to ethanol.


No one is arguing that anything is infinitely sustainable, but if we could stretch it 1000 years or so, technology has a small chance of improving:popcorn:
 
SkyHiK5 said:
Some one better tell the folks wwho lived for 1500 years prior to about 1.5-2 centuries ago that it is IMPOSSIBLE to grow crop without "petroleum based fertilizer"
I honestly question this at all.
Click to expand...

The folks who lived here 1500 years ago weren't intensively growing hybridized corn in monocultures that require increasing amounts of fossil fuels as the soils deteriorated.


I honestly question this at all. When I lived in Kansas and worked on a professional farm (275,000 acres) the only fertilizer they used was animal byproduct, mostly bought from turkey houses.
Click to expand...

And you distributed this fertilizer on the fields with equipment that burned 1/4 to 1/3 a gallon of diesel fuel (er... canola oil, right?) per bushel of corn produced.

Granted it may take a little longer, and the crops may grow a little slower, but its still feasible.
Click to expand...

It's not feasible when the object is to increase the yield to its absolute maximum. That's the problem. In order for it to work, in order to see the tiniest net energy increase without pushing the price through the roof, you've got to grow as much as you possibly can, as quickly as you possibly can. And pray that there's not a drought or a flood, because now food and fuel prices are going through the roof.

I'd like to see a link for this whole burning-crops thing. Especially considering that the goal of the subsidy programs is to push down the cost of US-grown agriculture so that it's competitive with ag products out of the 3rd world.
 
like stated before, I think most people are using WVO, not virgin oil. You can't really make much of an arguemnt for prices of food going up because of fuels, especially since most of the ethanol produced today doesn't come from corn, but from the stalks of the corn through the process of cellulosic ethanol. Also, if america cut back it's meat consumption by 10% there would be enough grain and other crops to feed the entire united states, south america and part of africa, not saying eating meat is bad but cows eat several tons of food per pound of beef they give back in return, so what I am really trying to say is piss off with all this negative attitude stuff, if there is a problem, there is always a way to compensate for it. With enough time the whole road tax thing will either be waived or it will be an easy process to deal with for SVO's
 
302ranger said:
You can't really make much of an arguemnt for prices of food going up because of fuels, especially since most of the ethanol produced today doesn't come from corn, but from the stalks of the corn through the process of cellulosic ethanol.
Click to expand...

I think you're mistaken:

Biofuel realities impinge on early promise

The promise of biofuels always sounded too good to be true. A technology that reduced dependence on oil supplies from unfriendly countries, helped fight global warming and gave an excuse for generous subsidies for a powerful political interest group: little wonder that politicians in the US, Europe and Asia have embraced it enthusiastically.

But in the past few months many claims made for biofuels have been shown to be out of touch with reality. The first-generation biofuels, grain ethanol and biodiesel, are costly, often of questionable environmental merit, and cannot replace more than a fraction of world demand for oil.

Brazilian ethanol from sugarcane, a cheaper and cleaner alternative, is viable domestically but held back by trade barriers. Second-generation biofuels, such as cellulosic ethanol made from plant waste, are still years from commercial production.

...

Second-generation biofuels are now the great hope. The US government has given up to $385m (€287m, £194m) to fund the development of six pilot plants. Vinod Khosla, the Silicon Valley venture capitalist, biofuel advocate and co-founder of Sun Microsystems, has said he expects cellulosic ethanol to be commercially viable by 2009.

However, Aasari Efiong, a renewable energy analyst at Merril Lynch, says companies have generally told her they see 2012-15 as a more realistic target.
 
Here is info that counters the arguement that ethanol production has caused the increase in corn prices. Sounds like the overall increase in fuel prices is more to blame.

I guess from my perspective, biomass based fuels in one piece of the puzzle. As more research is performed, biomass fuels will become less costly, the growing/refining process will become more efficient, and new uses for co-products will further drive for good ecomonics. Again, its just one piece of the puzzle and not a magic bullet. I'm happy to see the world exploring the biomass option now than 50 yrs from now when we may be more under the gun for energy alternatives.

Heck, I'm waiting for lower production costs of solar panels so I can take my house off the grid, or get credit back when I'm generating more power than my house uses. Now, let's go have a fermented beverage. :beer:
 
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