Posted on 02/28/2014 4:26:07 AM PST by thackney
The number of light-duty vehicles running on natural gas will more than double over the next decade to 39.8 million traveling on roads worldwide, according to a new report by research firm Navigant.
Despite the rapid growth, natural gas will continue to have a modest market share compared to gasoline and diesel in 2023, fueling just 2.6 percent of the cars and light-duty trucks on the road, Navigant projects.
A significant number of natural gas vehicles are already on the road in Brazil, Pakistan, Argentina and India, the report notes. But popularity is growing in North America, as well, driven by the relatively low price of natural gas and stricter vehicle emissions rules.
Navigant forecasts that the fueling stations and other infrastructure to support natural gas vehicles in North America will double by 2023.
Still, growth in China and many Western European countries will be even more rapid, the research firm projected. Navigant forecasts 138,177 light-duty natural gas vehicles will be sold in North America in 2023, compared to 1.9 million in the Asia-Pacific market.
“North America, despite the excitement surrounding newly available natural gas, is likely to remain a comparatively small market,” the report says.
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North America’ natural gas vehicle market is fundamentally different than in other parts of the world. While private consumers are driving growth in Western Europe, Latin America and Asia, demand in North America largely comes from commercial fleets.
As a result, instead of supplying the market with factory-built natural gas vehicles, manufacturers largely are relying on vehicle conversions in the North America. Cars and trucks manufactured to run on gasoline or diesel later are outfitted to run on natural gas.
Some refueling stations have CNG contaminated with water and compressor oil. The high pressure filters cannot stop the vaporized oil and water so it blows by and get dumped into the regulator. At least you hope it stops there and not the injectors.
You need a compressor. And don’t use an air compressor. It needs to be rated for hazardous material. They typically compress into the vehicle tanks 3,000 psi or greater.
Those systems are already available.
The tanks are the problem but theres allot of research being done on that with steels and carbon fiber. Get the weight down and protect the valve system which seems to be the weakest part. Standardize the tanks and it can be as syple as swapping out you gas grill tank.
And here I thought I was bring clever and naughty!
Home fueling stations available with seemingly a lot of problems with reliability. At least that’s what I read.
I’m hoping this will get sorted out because I’d love to buy one of those CNG Honda Civics mfg down the road here in Indiana.
The manufacture of those refill systems that had some many problems went out of business. BNC (iirc) A commercial Mathias fueling company but the name and fixed the design problems. I think the have been doing much ibetter since then.
Thanks! I believe this is it:
http://www.brcfuelmaker.com/
They appear to have a dealer here in Indiana.
Will investigate.
Mathias ???
Autocorrect...
Supposed to be natural gas.
BRC is it.
I would want the home refuel. Slow but done overnight.
For me (not driving that many miles being retired) the economics look shaky.
The compressor is in the 4 grand range and the Honda Civic Nat Gas version is about 6 grand more.
My fuel cost currently is about $1500/year so even if I cut that in half the payback is quite lengthy.
NG would be a nice hedge on availability if for some reason gasoline is a problem. I’m old enough to remember the fuel problems of the 70s in the Nixon and Carter era.
That is going to be key with any up front cost for lower cost to drive.
I'm averaging 20k a year on my truck and about 50k including the other two vehicles. But the oldest heads away to college in the fall.
I've considered it. But I haven't justified it yet.
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