I’ll pay the higher price, thank you very much.
From what I’ve heard, the “natural gas burning car” hasn’t quite made the grade, yet....
Care to share what you’ve heard negative about NG fueled cars?
Aside from the cost to convert to CNG and the current scarcity of CNG fueling stations, I have not heard anything negative, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t negatives.
CNG fueled vehicles have been around for a long time. In Texas many companies were utilizing CNG fueled fleets back in the 60’s and are still going strong.
Technology has improved greatly in the past 10 years and CNG refueling stations are popping up everywhere in Texas and Oklahoma. Oklahoma is providing many incentives to either convert or purchase factory equipped cars and trucks.
BTW....little or no difference in fuel economy.
“From what I’ve heard, the “natural gas burning car” hasn’t quite made the grade, yet...”
Obviously there are many fleet vehicles running on CNG and you can even purchase a dual fuel conversion kit for “SOME” cars (thanks to insane rules for testing from the EPA the choice is not huge).
Dual fuel is what we need right now to allow more and more gas stations to be equipped with CNG filling units along with existing gasoline pumps.
In many areas, NY for example the State DOT would not allow us peons to fill up at their, errr excuse me OUR CNG filling stations but more and more independent stations are adding CNG options.
It is cleaner burning, more engine friendly, better cold weather starting and in fairness, it does require more physical space for fuel storage Mile/Mile compared to gasoline.
How hasn’t CNG made the grade?
It is commercially viable right now, without subsidy.
Studies of truck fleets have found substantial savings in maintenance costs (it burns so clean, they can even extend the oil change interval).
There are aftermarket conversion kits...meaning the engine is unchanged, its just another version of fuel delivery.
CNG doesn’t suffer from limited range, or low power like electric. The only limitation is the availability of stations....which is why we have primarily seen the conversion in truck fleets only.
Europeans have been bolting on conversion kits for years, to combat wide swings in gas prices. It works better for them, since they don’t use cars for ‘road trips’ like we do (they use trains heavily subsidized with gas taxes). So, it works great for a daily driver, where you know you have a station nearby.
I really see very little downside...and the article states that (very quietly) 110,000 CNG vehicles have hit the road. Compare that with the much hyped electric vehicle fleet, which is a fraction of that.
Really, what have you ‘heard’ that is a downside to CNG vehicles?
Maybe not for personal vehicles (not enough natural gas stations), but commercial vehicles...all the bugs are worked out.
Companies like UPS are going big into natural gas for their trucks. When enough do, it will reduce the demand for gasoline, reducing the cost.
And, they are doing it without federal govt support. If anything, the federal govt is getting in the way, because natural gas is at odds with Obama’s vision of electric vehicles.
My sister had a dual gas/CNG car for a while. It ran very well, and the changeover from CNG to gas (when the CNG tank was empty) was seamless.
Only fault I found, the CNG tank took up too much of the trunk space. She didn’t plan to use the trunk space, so no problem.
Somebody hit it, and she replaced it with a gasoline-only car.
Tests to measure the maximum horsepower of commercial vehicles converted for use with natural gas fuel indicate a reduction of approximately 20% in horsepower compared with gasoline-driven vehicles. This reduction in horsepower resulting from the use of gas is due basically to the lower thermal efficiency of the cycle of natural gas compared with that of gasoline and to its lower volumetric efficiency, since natural gas is injected into the combustion chamber in gaseous form, unlike gasoline, in which part of the fuel entering the cylinder is in the liquid phase. Natural gas used as a fuel generates lower quantities of air pollutants, particularly unburned hydrocarbons (HCs) and carbon monoxide (CO). Despite the downside of reduced horsepower, the use of natural gas as a fuel for automotive vehicles equipped with Otto-cycle engines is economically viable owing to the wide availability of natural gas.
Regular gas engines running on natural gas will only get about 50 percent fuel mileage versus running on gasoline. When they first started converting car engines to natural gas the cost of natural gas was about a third the price of regular gas. So even though you were using twice as much fuel you were still saving money. Now I think natural gas is about 50 to 65% the price of fuel so the savings isn't quite there.
Natural gas is still a good source of fuel for cars but the engine needs to be build for it. If the engine is set up for it right it will do a lot better as far as getting higher fuel mileage. From what I understand a proper setup for natural gas will get anywhere from 70 to 90% fuel mileage of a gas engine. It will also make more power.
Some other benefits to running natural gas is oil change intervals can be doubled and the spark plugs will last a long, long time. So you can save more money by having to pass less for maintenance.
Not true. Natural gas vehicles work great. Only limitation is total miles per tank which is about 180 miles for a Honda civic
The conversion is easy and the vehicles reliable. Even growing up in the early 80’s there were a small number of farmers that had LP equipped pickup trucks.
The downside, besides pressurized fueling, is that LP isn’t as powerful as gasoline. I assume that means less miles per gallon, as well as a little less pep. Therefore, the comparison needs to be on cost per mile, not per gallon.
Sometimes when I can’t get an old mower to start, I take off the aircleaner and set up a propane torch to dump raw LP into the air intake. It ALWAYS fires right up and runs like hell. A minute or two at high RPM cleans out the carbon, etc. and they then run great.