I'm new to this forum, so sorry if this issue has been dealt with already.

I just want to throw in some research I've done to help me decide whether my next car will be a hybrid or diesel (using biodiesel). As far as mpgs, you can find diesels that are comparable to hybrids. But when it comes to emmissions, which is our biggest motivation, the results definitely are in favour of the gasoline hybrid, at least for the near future.

There is very little out there comparing biodiesel to gasoline hybrids emmissions. Most comparisons are between the petro-diesel and the biodiesel. According to a well-researched article on Wikipedia, biodiesel produces 50-90% fewer smog producing and ozone depleting emmissions than petro-diesel (depending on the type of emmission). However, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), petro-diesel produces up to 10-20 times more emmissions (again depending on the type of emmission) than conventional gasoline engines. This huge difference means that the tailpiple of biodiesel cars still produces higher emmissions than a conventional gasoline engine.

Biodiesel supporters, however, point out that biofuels are actually carbon-nuetral. The plants that go into the making of biofuels take in as much carbon as the biodiesel engine puts out.

Biodiesel critics (see link to biofuelswatch.uk below) argue that the carbon-nuetral arguement ingnores the fact that land was cleared of original native carbon sucking plants to produce agrobusiness carbon sucking plants producing a zero net benefit. In some places, massive clearcutting is taking place to clear land for biofuel plants. The result is actually a negetive benefit when we include smoke produced by forest fires used to clear the land.

At the end of the day, it seems to me that the best choice for now is simply to compare what comes out of the tailpipe and that leaves me choosing the hybrid.

I'd be interested to hear what others think.

Cheers,
Mark

http://www.ucsusa.org/clean_vehicles...biodiesel.html

http://www.biofuelwatch.org.uk/


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biodiesel