Re: Gas vs TDI: Calculate your break-even point
Hi all. Here's my $0.02...
Yes, with new prices it does not matter; the diesel savings overtakes the difference rather rapidly.
As someone mentioned a while ago - make biodiesel and the difference (for a later model) is closed even faster. What I did was to take the price of gas (or diesel in my case)as $2 and the price of bio (about 40 cents per gallon) and divide it by the MPG for each car (I was generous and gave the gasser 27.5 and the TDI 42) this gave me the price per mile to fuel the car and I took the difference of these numbers. So it's roughly 6.3 cents difference, for me, per mile. Change the mileage and costs and this difference also changes, but it can only increase (using more realistic numbers I can achieve a difference of roughly 9 cents per mile).
Ok, so if you wanna know how many miles it will take to make up a certain dollar amount simply divide your miles by this amount. If you want to know how much money you've saved (or wasted if you have a gasser) multiply this difference by the number of miles and out pops the dollar figure.
As my difference is so large I decide to really lay it on, as it were. I totalled the
cost of 4 cars (84 Volvo 760 TD, 81 rabbit NA, 96 Passat wagon, and a 98 NB) along with the price of repairs/maintenance, mods and the cost of my bio processor. I also totalled the number of miles on bio.
Bottom line: I will break even on everything in another 250,000 miles. I know, I know this sounds ridiculous, but I plan to have that wagon for at least another 100,000 miles and yes I considered oil changes and things breaking. If I remove the cost and miles for the non TDIs I have less than 195K miles to go - to pay back
everything , not just the
difference in cost, which is far more considerable when you buy used.
But to put it more into perspective. I have totalled (conservatively) 150K miles between the 4 cars. At this rate I have saved about
$9,500 . That is enough to pay for the purchase price of both the wagon and the rabbit and to pay for my processor. So only three cars to go! Further, by the time the beetle needs an oil change, I've saved almost enough to make three payments - and after September it'll all be savings.
I believe making biodiesel is a bit more complicated than using the grease from your oil. That's why a garage, space, and cleanliness is important. If it was that easy, everybody would do it.
First of all, it
is that easy. The reason everyone isn't doing it is the same reason everybody doesn't do all kinds of things. They are afraid of: change, , being seen as different, putting forth effort and not getting a return, not doing it right (that's the biggy), it won't work, or it will work; and, let's face it, alot of people are just plain lazy and don't want to do anything more than they have to.
As for clenliness, You obviously haven't seen my garage
But the mixer itself is clean. The reason for the garage is there is more space which allows me to make more at a time - currently 100 gallons at a wack - but if I wanted to make less it wouldn't take much. Do you know how to operate a blender? Can you shake a martini?
my earliest experiments were in a regular kitchen blender and now whenever I speak on the subject I shake up a batch (about 1.5 litres) in a 2 litre bottle at the begining of my talk and by the time I'm done you can see the seperation. Before I stepped up to large scale tho I did the following:
Mix methanol and sodium hydroxide in a 5 gallon bucket (feel free to use larger but I can easily carry a five gallon pale full of fuel). Then, I mixed using a paint mixer on a hand drill. If you don't have any of this it will set you back about 40$US depending on the quality of drill (including a few buckets, which are cheap). I then pour in the oil and mix again. Then move the mixture to somewhere dry and let it settle. You will only have made 4 gallons worth of usable fuel, so you'll want to do more than one at a time. But with the amount you drive one bucket would last a while. Done with good ventilation, and considering the small amount of ingredients used, this should be quite safe. If you become interested in the details let me know and I can lay it all out for you step by step from soup to nuts.
