• A Straight Vegetable Oil or Waste Vegetable Oil (SVO/WVO) vehicle is part of a carbon-neutral cycle, meaning the plants that are used to make its fuel directly consume its carbon monoxide emissions. Fossil fuels don't take their own carbon back.
• SVO/WVO is smoother on the engine because it's naturally a better lubricant than engineered fuel.
• Fuel efficiency on a car running on grease ranges from 37-61 miles per gallon, depending on the size and model of the engine.
• Particulate matter—that nasty black stuff you see coming out of the stacks of big rigs, that nasty invisible stuff you don't see coming out of the tailpipes of other vehicles—is 39 percent less than that on a regular diesel engine.
• Las Vegan Rusty Blevins modified his old Mercedes with kits from Greasecar.com and Plantdrive.com, adding a dual-tank system so the car can run on WVO or diesel. Vegetable oil comes courtesy of ma-and-pa restaurants, the owners of which would normally have to pay to have their grease professionally removed. He filters the food particles out himself in his garage with industrial-size coffee filters and a ginormous plastic paint bucket, then again with a hand-crank rotary fuel pump mounted on a steel drum.
• Free fuel! Slave to the pump status eliminated.