Honda Civic Natural Gas
Posted on 11/07/2013 8:36:29 PM PST by bkopto
Sales of natural-gas powered big rigs could jump as much as fivefold this year as falling prices for both natural gas and the carbon fuel tanks required for such trucks come down, the Wall Street Journal says.
Lowe's, Procter & Gamble, UPS and PepsiCo are among the major US companies that have gone on record saying they're expanding their fleet of trucks that can run on either compressed natural gas (CNG) or liquefied natural gas (LNG). For instance, UPS is buying 1,000 natural-gas trucks by year-end, and P&G, whose fleet is about seven percent natural gas, is looking to boost that figure to 20 percent by 2015. FedEx wants 30 percent of its long-distance trucks to be powered by natural gas by 2023, while engine makers like Cummins Westport and Volvo are adding products to the market. As a result, as much as five percent of new heavy-duty trucks may be natural-gas powered in 2013, up from about one percent last year.
CNG sells for about $1.50 a gallon, less than half the $3.87 price of diesel last week. That means that, even with a carbon fuel tank boosting the price of a $120,000 rig by another $40,000 or so, a trucker that typically gets about six miles a gallon and drives about 100,000 miles a year, could pay back the extra cost in about two years. Already about 60 percent of new garbage trucks in the US will be natural-gas powered this year. Those drivers will be helped by an expanding network of CNG stations across the country.
(Excerpt) Read more at green.autoblog.com ...
Ping.
Honda Civic Natural Gas
When fuel first went way up several people I knew went to using natural gas for their pickups, a couple of them had their pickups catch fire and burn up. Is natural gas really safe?
They’re working on storage problems. There’s a national competition to be able to store much more fuel, safer.
I lived in a place with probably half of all commercial and one in twenty family vehicles were run on natgas. No specific accidents involving these vehicles ever happened.
Blame mechanic to installed equipment in your case.
There are a surprising number of CNG vehicles sold here in India, and it’s an option the dealer from a number of automobile manufacturers including Toyota and Suzuki. No problems that I’ve heard of with greater risk from that fuel.
The big trucks are subject to greater safety scrutiny anyway, so the risk of faulty equipment is probably even lower for them. This sounds like a good program to me. The commercial demand will increase the availability, and that in turn will make it feasible for more automobile makers to implement which will then drive even greater market penetration.
Excellent move. US gas reserves are about to go up up up - keep watching for news of new discoveries. Independents and wildcatters are ignoring Obama and succeeding anyway.
Also pay close attention to Eaton Corp (ETN). They’ve announced plans for a home CNG compressor that would sell for $500. That would be an absolute game-changer! The present low-end is a $6,000 unit.
Still for fleets and LTL truckers like in this article, the capital cost of a CNG compressor-refueling station would be very do-able, since their trucks return to a central hub at night and don’t need to worry about refueling on the road.
I don't think that trucker will be getting the same mpg with CNG.
The absurd new EPA regs on diesel rigs have caused manufacturers to add expensive urea injectors or exhaust scrubbers. Reliability is down, fuel costs up, repair costs up.
It makes total sense to switch to Natural Gas until the EPA gets executive orders to make that unprofitable also.
The thing I wonder about here, is mileage. It’s my understanding that natural gas does not have the same energy potential as diesel or gasoline, and thus does not have the MPG as those fuels. Some years ago, my older brother looked at getting a Crown Vic with the CNG/LNG (forget which was offered) setup. The lower MPG estimates were enough to put the kabosh on that idea.
I could well be wrong here, though. The folks buying the CNG trucks surely know their business better than I do.
It’s moving, tax it!!!!!
It stopped moving! Tax someone else and subsidize it!
I really wish fleet vehicles would not have a fueling station at their location, however. If there is going to be a viable CNG market, we need fueling stations that anyone can access.
I knew a guy who used a simple air compressor hooked into his gas line to fill a tank to take to the lake on weekends, that was over 60 years ago.
The Sun Bus line in Palm Springs, CA has been running on Natural Gas for 20 years or so.
The high price of diesel is mostly a tax, when Gasoline was a dollar diesel was 10 or 15 cents.
Its difficult to compare mpg, because the density of a gallon of natural gas varies greatly with pressure. So really its just a question of milee per dollar. Right now the edge goes to natural gas.
There is also a huge maintenance savings. Just about everything that goes wrong internally with the engine can be attributed to dirty oil...and with natural gas, the oil doesn’t get dirty. The interval for oil changes can be tripled, for example. Multiplied over an entire fleet, thats alot of money. And they are discovering a drop in all kinds of problems like wpun bearings, etc.
I was at a waste management site in Blaine MN last week. On my way out I noticed the CNG fueling station on the out side of the fence. So I drove by.
it was open to the public with pay at the pump. Sign just said GNC 1.99...
***CNG sells for about $1.50 a gallon, less than half the $3.87 price of diesel last week.***
Not for long I’ll bet. Someday soon several levels of tax will be added to that $1.50 to bring it on par with diesel, just to make it ‘fair’.
My question too. How much is it for a full tank? In my truck, a full tank gets me about 350-400 miles and costs me about $80 to fill up. What would be the equivalent cost to get the same mileage using NG?
perhaps some kind soul could
...-—>Please<-—...
explain LNG pricing. Thanks in advance.
...............................
commodity price of NG, 3.52 USD per million BTU.
energy content of diesel, 135000 btu per gallon,
so $3.52 of NG, 1 million divided by 135k,
is about 7.4...
4 bucks per gallon of diesel —>
4 divided by 7.4 is about $0.54 per gallon
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