What Happened to Biodiesel? It’s Complicated
Government officials demand that automakers future-proof their trucks, but it’s anyone’s guess how they’ll do it. Battery-powered pickups were supposed to be a boon for EV adoption but sales are stumbling and charging still sucks. The difficulties only snowball when towing, so you can forget about an electric heavy-duty model anytime soon. Meanwhile, traditional diesel is embroiled in controversy as the EPA takes on tuners and manufacturers over pollution, while owners are fed up with high-maintenance emissions control systems on their high-dollar pickups.
It’s kind of a mess, plainly put. Even if you look past the troubles of pulling heavy trailers with electric dually trucks, they’re bound to be cost-prohibitive for the average individual and small fleet operator. And even though some are confident that hydrogen will work, either in combustion engines or fuel cells, the refueling infrastructure might as well be nonexistent. But there is another way—a proven technology that once looked like the future but has since faded from the picture. I’m talking about biodiesel.
Now, when most people hear “biodiesel,” they assume one of two reasons it hasn’t caught on: A.) It’s for hippies and B.) it’s just as impractical as the alternatives. But while thinking on a potential fix for the spot we’re in, where petroleum diesel is dirty and emissions equipment is unreliable, I couldn’t help but wonder why a largely plug-and-play solution offering the same fundamental benefits wasn’t getting any attention. That’s why I’ve spent months investigating what happened to biodiesel: the original promise, the science, the stumbles, and the chance of it ever making a comeback. Here’s what I found.
