Beyond Gasoline: His Car Smelling Like French Fries, Willie Nelson Sells Biodiesel
I drove the car, loved the way it drove. The tailpipe smells like French fries. I bought me a Mercedes, and the Mercedes people were a little nervous when I took a brand new Mercedes over and filled it up with 100 percent vegetable oil coming from the grease traps of Maui. I figured I’d be getting notices about the warranty and that stuff. However, nobody said anything. I get better gas mileage, it runs better, the motor runs cleaner, so I swear by it. It could get as big as we can grow fuel or find different things to make fuel from, such as chicken fat, beef fat, add that along to soybeans, vegetable oils, peanuts, safflower, sunflower.
- Willie Nelson
It may well be an idea whose time has come. With hybrid vehicles now being all the rage and virtually impossible to obtain at any price, the idea of alternative fuels may finally be coming into vogue.
Of course, the idea of alternative fuels is hardly a new one. Ethanol has been a usable fuel for years now, but just try and find it anywhere. Good luck, ‘cuz you’re going to need that and a LOT of patience. The reality is that even though there are many, many vehicles on the road today capable of running on an ethanol/gasoline mix (most people who own these vehicles are completely unaware that they own a vehicle that can run on an alternative fuel). There is simply no real incentive for fuel companies or auto manufacturers to promote the use of alternative fuels…and so they don’t. And this is exactly why I applaud Willie Nelson’s efforts to develop and market BioWillie biodiesel.
At 72, Nelson has no real need to expand his business portfolio. The man can afford all the Jamaican Happy Weed he can inhale, and then some. No, this is something that sprung out of a conviction that the direction that this country is headed in is just plain wrong. WE DESERVE BETTER, and Willie Nelson decided that he just might be able to do something about that. It’s a small step in the right direction, but it is nonetheless a step, one that deserves recognition and support. If we can find a way to run our vehicles of fuels OTHER than gasoline, just think what that might do for our economy…not to mention our dependence on foreign oil? There would be no reason to go to war in Iraq.
OK, so perhaps this all might seem a dramatic pie-in-the-sky scenario right about now…but Nelson’s idea has some very real possibilities. With some resolve, and a government willing to create a tax environment that would make it possible to invest in and develop Nelson’s ideas, who knows what the future might hold?
OF course, there are a few multinational oil conglomerates that might want to weight in on this. And therein lies the problem….
Willie Nelson drives a Mercedes.
But do not lose faith, true believers. The exhaust from Mr. Nelson’s diesel-powered Mercedes smells like peanuts, or French fries, or whatever alternative fuel happens to be in his tank.
While Bono tries to change the world by hobnobbing with politicians and Sir Bob Geldof plays host to his mega-benefit concerts, Willie Nelson has birthed his own brand of alternative fuel. It is called, fittingly enough, BioWillie. And in BioWillie, Mr. Nelson, 72, has blended two of his biggest concerns: his love of family farmers and disdain for the Iraq war.
BioWillie is a type of biodiesel, a fuel that can be made from any number of crops and run in a normal diesel engine. If it sounds like a joke, a number of businesses, as well as city and state and county governments, have been switching their transportation fleets to biodiesel blends over the last year. The rationale is that it is a domestic fuel that can provide profit to farmers and that it will help the environment, though environmentalists are not universally enthusiastic about it.
“I knew we needed to have something that would keep us from being so dependent on foreign oil, and when I heard about biodiesel, a light come on, and I said, ‘Hey, here’s the future for the farmers, the future for the environment, the future for the truckers,” Mr. Nelson said in an interview this month. “It seems like that’s good for the whole world if we can start growing our own fuel instead of starting wars over it.”
In some ways, it is a return to the origins of the diesel engine; some of Rudolf Diesel’s first engines ran on peanut oil more than a century ago.
Hey, this is not as far-fetched as it might seem at first glance. If oil companies will agree to get on board, instead of trying to obstruct the development of biodiesel technology, we may well be looking at a future of something close to energy independence. Though Willie Nelson may be long gone by the time his vision becomes a reality, if it does come to fruition, all of us will owe Nelson a debt of gratitude.
Energy independence? In our lifetimes? I don’t know what the possibilities are, because I’m not a chemical or petroleum engineer. Nevertheless, if we have a technology at hand that is proven and can be expanded upon quickly with the right commitment of time, money, and expertise, why WOULDN’T we want to head in that direction?
Oh, yeah…OIL…and the Bush Adminstration and their friends in the oil industry…that’s why….
