When Bob Teixeira decided to help stop our addiction to foriegn oil and convert a car to run on vegetable oil, he didn’t expect to get nailed with over $2,000 in fines.
The musician and guitar instructor from Charlotte, NC bought a converter kit for about $1,200 to make his 1981 Mercedes run on vegetable oil. The would then buy 5-gallon jugs of soy bean oil from a local wholesale warehouse store to run the converted car.
Since last Fall he’s been running the car with that oil and now faces a $1,000 state fine for not paying motor fuel tax. Authorities have told him that he can expect another $1,000 fine from the federal government. Why?
In North Carolina you have to post a $2,000 bond to use alternative fuels in your car. So legally he can’t be running his soy bean Mercedes without the bond. So by saving money, reducing pollution, and not depending on oil from other countries it will cost you.
The $2,500 bond is getting revisited for small do-it-yourself users of alternative fuel. The state legislature may be worried by these moves, however. With a 29.9 cent per gallon gas tax the state generates $1.2 billion a year in revenue for road construction. That’s a lot of beans.
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