On September 15, 2007,Sustainable Fairfax hosted a panel of speakers to educate the public on the most environmentally friendly choices of cars with low to no carbon emissions available today. The focus of discussion was what you can drive today as opposed to waiting several years to drive a more energy efficient vehicle.

Speakers were:

• Keith Rey: Marin Honda

• Marc Geller: Electric car advocate, co-founder Plug-In America

• Lance McCardle: LC Biofuels, LLC

• Jeff Kroop: SVO conversion

Panelists spoke on their area of expertise and then it was opened to questions and answers and discussion on the myriad of questions on this subject matter. We had on site alternative fuel cars, an Ambrewlance form Iron Springs run on recycled Veggie oil, Marc Geller's electric car run on the Sun, and a Honda Civic on Natural gas.

Event Producer:Eugenia Ives
Notes from the event:

What to Drive if You Must Event Notes

Marin Honda

• Fuel cell cars means hydrogen fueled.

• Advantage: byproduct is water

• Disadvantage: Very large tanks, potentially unsafe in a collision.

• Natural gas as a fuel: cheap, clean

• hard to find

• tank in back

• adapters exist, you can fill the car at night

• not much trunk space left

• less volatile than gasoline

• 230 miles on 7 gallons

• lots natural gas driven forklifts in warehouses because gasoline would poison everyone working in a enclosed warehouse space

• the Honda Civic Natural Gas car runs 220 miles on a full tank

• Honda (unlike Toyota) made the decision to design the car to look the same as other Hondas because they wanted it to fit seamlessly into the mainstream

• "well to wheel" index means how ecologically friendly a fuel is from the source to the point where you're using it to drive; natural gas rates high (how high was not clarified)

Electric Cars

• cleaner

• cheaper (1/3 the price of gasoline) no matter how you make the electricity, even with coal

• Even thought electricity may have a carbon footprint to be generated, the carbon output by using electric car is far far far less than that of a gasoline driven car (a rough non-documented percentage is that electric cars have a 10% of carbon footprint vs. that of a gasoline driven car)

• you can plug in at home; if you use solar power, even better – no carbon footprint!

• 100-140 mile range

• Zap cars (zapworld.com) has wonderful viable electric car options available right now for mostly local driving – usually not freeway. They can go upwards of 40MPH. Zap cars are available through dealers who specialize in selling them. Local dealer is Daviselectriccars.com in Davis, California.

• the Tesla electric sports car is being developed in San Carlos, California

• electric cars are making a comeback: check out www.pluginamerica.com

• plug-in hybrids use gas to make electricity – buy a hybrid and then get a converter kit to make it a “plug-in” hybrid which uses about 50% less gas than a regular hybrid.

• there's tons of electricity available at night, the electricity companies don't need to make more to accommodate people recharging their electric cars (scalability not addressed?)

• Quote of the day: "Don't buy a car. Tell the auto companies you want a plug-in car." Obviously, electric cars are a wonderful environmental, low to no carbon footprint carbon footprint car to drive, but for political and economic reasons most electric cars have been pulled from the market place by manufacturers.

• Send letters/postcards to Dr. Robert Sawyer, Chair of California Air Resources Board asking CARB to do everything possible to expedite and facilitate the availability of electric cars and plug-in hybrids. Address to write to is: CARB, 1001 "I" Street, PO Box 2815, Sacramento, CA 95812.

Biodiesel

• Probably the smartest and most environmentally friendly way to drive, with the exception of electric cars, right now.

• Biodiesel is readily available in the Bay Area. It is $3.60 p/gallon in San Anselmo at a regular fuel pump at Green Fusion. www.lcbiofuels.com

• biodiesel is derived from vegetable oil (primarily soybeans) or tallow

• It's relatively hard to get in other parts of the country and state other than the Bay Area or LA. California still considers it an experimental fuel so it's not for sale at the pumps in more than a 20% blend with regularly diesel #2

• B20 is a 20% blend, B30 a 30% blend, B99.9 is a 99.9% blend, which is what's on sale at Green Fusion in San Anselmo

• You need to become a member of a biodiesel user group; sign agreements that you know how to use it properly

• diesel was originally created as an alternative to petroleum

• you don't need to do anything to convert a diesel engine to biodiesel; it's a turnkey alternative fuel … just buy a diesel car and start running it on biodiesel

• however, most cars before 1994 have pure rubber in the fuel systems and biodiesel will break these seals over time, so you may need to replace the rubber with synthetic seals

• Mercedes 1980s models work well, run to ~500k miles, cheap, no modifications required

• you do need to make sure you get high grade stuff so you maintain the warranty on your car

• if your car's warranty states you can only use up to 5% biodiesel up to 50,000 miles (or whenever your warranty runs out), this means you are supposed only use up to a 5% biodiesel blend with regular diesel – but no one is really checking and your warranty is still good unless there is a fuel line problem only with your car. The car company also has no way of proving you were using biodiesel more than 5%

• in very cold weather (e.g. 4,000 feet, Tahoe), you need to use the B20-B30 blends

• When you first start running your diesel car on biodiesel change check your air filter as the cleaner biodiesel will kick out a lot of the “gunk” that your regular diesel engine as sitting in it. Running on biodiesel gives your engine a colonic of sorts.

• A dealership specializing in diesel cars to run on biodiesel in the Bay Area www.dieselhq.net or ecomotors.biz.

Veggie Oil (SVO)

• veggie oil gets adapted/filtered so you can use it in your car

• SVO is the system in which you can get free used veggie oil from restaurants and clean it yourself and run your car on it.

• This is a labor intensive system in that you have to obtain and clean your SVO yourself (generally – maybe can buy from others SVO people)

• old diesel Mercedes work best for the SVO system

• "well to wheel" very good return

• it's a 2-tank system: start the car on main tank using bio fuel. When you're up to running temperature, flip to straight veggie oil because it needs that high temperature to combust properly

• quite challenging to procure and filter still; you can't just go to the pump and fill up, you have to be willing to get your knuckles scraped

• Sometimes cars driven on SVO breakdown and it is harder to get a mechanic who understands the SVO system

• filters last for ~10k miles

• there aren't many statistics yet on emissions findings but you know you can eat it, so it's got to be nontoxic!

• GoldenFuelSystems.com for also more info