Los Angeles cars going green - Yahoo! News

LOS ANGELES (AFP) - With gasoline prices soaring, anxieties about global warming, and concern over the war in
Iraq' name=c1> SEARCHNews News Photos Images Web' name=c3> Iraq, a small but growing group in Los Angeles is replacing petroleum with alternative fuels.
Clean fuel vehicle mechanic and salesman Brian Friedman cannot keep up with demand and says he is selling twenty vegetable oil fueled cars a week.
"Love Craft," his shop just east of Hollywood, is overflowing with 100 mostly late 1970s to early 1980s Mercedes diesel cars waiting to be converted and sold to anxious buyers.
"It's not just the environmental hippie types that are interested in making the switch," Friedman told AFP. "We even get the rednecks in pickup trucks," he said pointing to a hulking Ford F150 pickup.
Friedman has also seen growing interest from farmers seeking to convert their equipment, a surprising niche in a city defined by car culture.
He also sells conversion kits directly to his mechanically inclined customers.
Love Craft's cars run on either recyled or fresh vegetable oil, which Friedman recommends because it eliminates the need for industrial refinement.
Processed to remove the glycerin from the vegetable oil molecule, biodiesel fuel is compatible with standard diesel engines and requires no conversion in warm climates like Los Angeles.
"For your regular busy person who wants to get out of the wrong vehicle and into the right one, you've got to make it simple," biodiesel mechanic Tom Francis told AFP.
Even Rudolf Diesel, German inventor of the diesel engine in 1894, schemed running his motor on peanut oil.
In late May, two commercial fueling stations on the west side of Los Angeles began pumping biodiesel made from California walnut oil, with the price currently set at 3.49 dollars per gallon.
"This is Los Angeles, where we're not supposed to be thinking about these sorts of things," said Francis, who belongs to a biodiesel cooperative. "People here are particularly distracted and preoccupied, and to have biodiesel available at a commercial pump is a huge triumph."
The cooperative takes credit for bringing to light the local demand for commercial alternative fuel. Tired of driving one hundred miles north or east for biodiesel fuel, the group banded together and operated a thousand-gallon tank in west Los Angeles.
According to Francis, within three months a commercial fuel station had stepped up and introduced biodiesel at their pumps eliminating the need for the cooperative. So the operation moved east, closer to downtown Los Angeles hoping to have the same jumpstarting effect.
"People are looking at that gas nozzle and don't feel good about it," said Francis. "They're deciding to act."
Francis' customer Chris Salvaterra, who drove a Toyota Prius hybrid for three years, is looking forward to the arrival of his biodiesel-ready car this week.
"It's the next step off the petroleum grid," he told AFP. "Maybe next, I'll switch to pure veggie oil."
The clean fuel trend has also taken hold in the rental car business.
After success in Hawaii, "Bio-Beetle" opened its doors near Los Angeles International airport earlier this year. Operating four biodiesel fueled cars, with another to be added this week, the young company serves a diverse clientelle.
"We just got a call the other day from a young fellow in India who wants to rent our Volkswagen Passat for a month to tour the National Parks," west coast operations manager, Joe Blackburn told AFP.
"Give the planet a vacation the next time you take one," reads the company slogan.
"As far as biodiesel rentals, I don't know of anyone else doing it in the world," said Blackburn.
Though Love Craft owner Freidman has seen his business spike along with the price of gasoline, he doesn't fear a drop in fossil fuel prices.
"It would give me a little breathing room," he said. "I've seen my business grow so fast I had to rent a lot around the corner just to store the cars."