Honda starts selling natural gas Civic in New York state
Honda has been selling natural gas powered Civics In California since 1998. Now for the first time the cars are available outside of the sunshine state. This will be the only dedicated natural gas powered car offered for sale in the United States. The Civic GX has an 8 gallon gas equivalent fuel tank with natural gas pressurized to 3600 psi. It's rated at the equivalent of 28/39 mpg. The engine is a 1.8L four banger rated at 113 hp and is mated to a 5-speed automatic.
Thanks to the near zero emissions, the Civic is eligible for a $4,000 federal tax credit and an extra $1,000 in tax credits if you buy a "Phill". Phill is a home refueling station for natural gas vehicles. Since many homes already have natural gas coming in, adding a mechanism to allow an owner to fill their car from the gas supply they already have makes perfect sense and very convenient. The combination of home refueling, a clean burning car and good fuel efficiency is definitely very appealing. The only apparent drawback is the limited 200 mile range. If you don't do much long distance driving this could definitely be good option, at least if you live in California or one of the nineteen Honda dealers in New York state that will be selling the car.
[Source: Honda]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Steve Z 7:06AM (5/03/2008)
How is it that virtually all taxicabs in Eastern Europe are "CNG-converts" and the CNG stations have greater density per square ares then gasoline(petrol) stations and the whole wave took less then 10 years in countries that are relatively poor compared to the US, and also lack the extensive natural gas distribution infrastructure?
Answer: XOM(stock symbol) needs its 20% quarterly growth figures
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seighton 1:40PM (10/20/2006)
Florida is the "sunshine state." I think California is the "Kindergarten Cop state"
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Howard Lee Harkness 1:57PM (10/20/2006)
Aside from the fact that CH4 is a FOSSIL FUEL, how do you deal with the fact that most states (Texas in particular) want to tax automobile fuel?
CH4 will put out less CO2 than gasoline (approximately C8H18), which is nice, but unless an economical supply can be made in a renewable fashion, it has the same drawback as any other FOSSIL FUEL, namely, we will eventually run out of it, no matter how frugally we use it. It's certainly possible to generate CH4 from biological processes, but there is no such process in use today capable of producing anywhere near enough of the stuff to power more than a tiny percentage of our autos.
I still favor a combination of biodiesel/electric, which has the potential to replace enough oil to cut OPEC out of the loop completely, while actually being 'green' in a meaningful sense.
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Jeremy 2:51PM (10/20/2006)
I think it's acutally the "SUV state".
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hondafan 9:31AM (10/23/2006)
sales will be severly limited as fueling stations are limited (unless buyer spends a few thousand to install Phill in his garage) and the fact that you can only get the GX serviced at authorized Honda dealerships that sell the GX and have their service department outfitted to fix the GX.
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