What's up with natural gas vehicles?
by Sebastian Blanco on Jul 30th 2009 at 7:56PM 
2009 Honda Civic GX
One thing we try to do with our weekly series of Greenlings articles is answer reader questions about the green car industry (if you've got a burning need to know something, please let us know). Considering today's news that the Honda Civic GX is now available for sale in Utah, we thought we'd dig into AutoblogGreen reader Island Don's question about compressed natural gas vehicles. Here it is (slightly edited):Follow us through the jump for the answer.To me as a big diesel guy, I see the the CNG as a great, cheap, clean burning alternative to to gas, diesel, or hybrid, yet Honda CNG sales aren't great. Why haven't they done better? Why haven't they been promoted by the government or the manufacturer? I've never seen an ad, nor ever heard any politician promote them. Yet I see all the buses in LA and San Diego running on CNG. That tells me there's an infrastructure in place. What's the scoop?
Back in April, we took a Greenlings look at CNG vehicles, and we'll assume you've read that primer about the basics and try to look at the broader CNG picture in this issue (if not – go do it).
CNG-powered vehicles are certainly the invisible children of the green car scene in the U.S. While there are nearly 10 million natural gas vehicles in the world – here are a few examples from India, Germany and France – they're not common on American roads. Still, Island Don is right when he says that buses (and other large vehicles) do burn the fuel in some cities. Some U.S. Senators who want to promote more CNG vehicles in the U.S. say that "natural gas has the ability to displace 100 percent of the petroleum used in heavy-duty vehicles." Wait, Senators? Yes. Natural gas vehicles are promoted by the government. At least some of the time.
The support is important, since CNG vehicles cost a lot more than standard gasoline vehilces. Some estimates put the extra cost of converting a CNG vehicle at $12,500 to $22,500 (most of this is for EPA licensing requirements, not the technology, so this government hurdle is jumpable). As for what the government is doing to help CNG, there is a federal tax credit worth up to $4,000 to buyers of CNG cars. Earlier this month, U.S. Senator Robert Menendez (D-NJ) introduced a bill called the NAT GAS Act that would greatly expand federal government support for natural gas vehicles. Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT) were co-sponsors of the bill, so it's got serious support. According to the co-sponsors, the bill would, among other natural gas benefits:
Expand and modify the alternative fueled vehicle and refueling property tax credits as follows:
- Makes all dedicated natural gas-fueled vehicles eligible for a credit equal to 80% of the vehicle's incremental cost. Only some dedicated natural gas vehicles currently can qualify for an 80% federal tax credit
- Makes all bi-fuel natural gas-fueled vehicles eligible for a credit equal to 50% of the vehicle's incremental cost. This is the first time bi-fuel vehicles would be eligible for a federal tax credit
- Increase the allowable incremental cost limits to more accurately reflect the cost of producing or converting natural gas vehicles:
- For light-duty vehicle, the purchase tax credit cap would be increased by to $12,500 (currently $5,000)
- For all other vehicle weight classes, the purchase tax credit cap would be doubled
- Increases the refueling property tax credit from $50,000 to $100,000 per station
Gallery: Toyota Camry CNG Hybrid Concept
So, government support can be found. Not at the same level as other gasoline-alternative technologies and not without complications, but it is available. As for the question on why manufacturers aren't promoting CNG vehicles, our eyes need to turn to Honda, since no other OEM sells CNG vehicles direct to the public (there are plenty of conversions available, especially large trucks from Ford and Roush). There are conspiracy theories that Honda can't build enough Civic GXs to supply demand out there, but we can't see any automaker throw away any potential sales these days, so we're not sure about that one. Toyota toyed with the idea of a CNG-powered Camry hybrid at last year's LA Auto Show, but no production plans have been announced. OEMs are promoting CNG to fleets – just ask the AFVI folks – but for "regular" drivers, they apparently see no need to really push for CNG.
Lastly, let's look at whether car companies sell CNG vehicles if they were available? This comes down to a question of infrastructure. A new project by the National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL) called TransAtlas shows just where in the U.S. refueling stations for all sorts of fuels are, including CNG (pictured below), hydrogen and E85. To see whether or not the fuel is available near you, click on the map below to visit the NREL page and zoom the map to where you live or want to drive the car. As for the gas that is needed to keep the CNG cars and infrastructure humming, it looks like there is enough domestic supply "to displace imports of all petroleum products... for 43 years" (visit The Oil Drum for the number crunching details). Back in 2007, USAToday published a story headlined "Natural-gas powered cars: Who even knows they exist?" Two years later, this question still doesn't have a solid answer, but at least a few more AutoblogGreen readers know.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Rain 8:14PM (7/30/2009)
Here is the Acog for Oklahoma Alternative Energy Credits.
http://www.okcleancities.com/man_okafv.html
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Murc 8:37PM (7/30/2009)
I hardly hear anything about CNG, except occasionally I hear Ron Paul talking them up.
But after looking at that map, I now know why...it seems to have avoid my state like the plague. (South Dakota)
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mk3 9:09PM (7/30/2009)
The author states "Some estimates put the extra cost of a CNG vehicle at $12,500 to $22,500 (most of this is for EPA licensing requirements,..)
This is incorrect; it refers to the cost of conversion of a standard gasoline vehicle to run natural gas correctly and legally.
I think the additional cost of a natural gas vehicle could be only a few hundred dollars, although the resulting vehicle would have limited range due to the relative small capacity of the tanks.
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Sebastian 1:51AM (7/31/2009)
You're right. Text has been edited/
LFP 9:25PM (7/30/2009)
It's a damn shame. CNG is simple (very little difference from a standard gasoline engine, so easy to produce) and has the basics of the infrastructure set up all over the country (that is, gas pipes)
I think it lacks support because it's not flashy.
Fuel Cells, "New" Battery technology, Cellulosic Bio-mass ethanol, etc... All of which will get here "Some day" or already exist "but they are just working out 'a few' kinks in wide scale production and cost" have these stupidly big promises to save the world, bring polar bears back from the dead, and only fart rainbows as their exhaust.
I hate to say it, but more tangible, immediate technologies are in place and should be used.
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dg 9:45PM (7/30/2009)
It seems to me that while we're busy fighting about all of these other sources of energy to use in our cars we could just be focusing on making purely battery-electric cars and using the different fuels to power the grid. This way people don't have to go searching for which effing fuel is going to be available in their area (which, by the way, is total nosense. The only viable fuel is the one that is available everywhere. As of now those are gasoline and electricity and since we can barely even keep our current infrastructure intact I doubt ANY other fuel is plausible because we'd have to build an nation-wide infrastructure for it.) or is going to be best for them for their needs. Electricity can be made from ANY fuel, and while I know I'm no expert it seems to me that converting various fuels to electricity in big plants is more efficient than converting it to electricity or thrust in a small vehicle.
Electricity is guaranteed to never go away. Other fuels can/will. So, as they do, why not make the transition seamless for consumers by only switching what powers the grid, not what powers each of our cars (rendering perfectly good cars useless in the process).
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Lorena Palin 10:11PM (7/30/2009)
OK...Let me just point something out. No one was really fighting on this post, until now.
It seams like every time anything other than BEVs and PHEVs are mentioned, promoted, or suggested, the EV folks jump on it and try to rip it to shreds.
All these innovations across every field- from batteries, to alternate fuels, generator systems, transmissions, improvements to traditional engines, lightening bodies- everything helps. To exclusively promote any one of these basically is environmental suicide. Now the need to convert fuel into power is very necessary, and a lot of people want it happening on board their car, due to range issues, battery cost, weight, ect... If you don't improve the original power plants- your engines, you are screwed. At highway speeds a car that has it's engine providing power to the wheels will be more efficient then a series hybrid- converting kinetic to electric to kinetic only works when the inherent inefficiencies of that setup are less than the difference in power between the actual need of the vehicle and what is produced at it's optimal running speed. In layman's terms, plug series hybrids are only more efficient in city driving when a traditional mild hybrid (engine stops when idling, regen breaking) is using low gears. I love EVs, but I just don't see alot of progress being made in cars that everyone could drive, most of them are way to expensive sportscars, or glorified golf carts that cost as much as a "real" car. I see alot more tangible progress out of other fields, which should be pursued.
The fact is, no one single technology can grow to fill the void very quickly. Every little bit helps- even stupid little stuff like mainstream auto manufacturers releasing cars that are 2-3 mpg higher than before. That does just as much good as a few rich boys who drive their tesla instead of thier proche every now and again, and it does infinitely better than all these EV prototypes that never seam to get produced.
Now, Natural gas is very widely available- anywhere that you see a gas stove, you have natural gas. compressing it is simple, and involves equipment similar to what a lot of people have in their garage.
dg 10:18PM (7/30/2009)
I totally agree with you. I didn't mean to start an argument (admittedly, I should know better by now), I was just expressing how I look at it. It's ridiculous for anyone backing any one of these fuels to suggest that we can just shift the market to that and everybody lives happily ever after. Simply put, progress requires competition; on all levels.
Thanks for your reply.
Dave B 10:04PM (7/30/2009)
I worked for a school district in Arizona that converted all of it's vehicles to CNG in 1995. It was a fairly simple process.
14 years later we still do not see CNG vehicles at auto dealerships.
When I tried to convert a vehicle to CNG last year, I found the costs was about $10,000.
What gives?
I finally gave up waiting for CNG vehicles in Arizona and bought a Hybrid......
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Lorena Palin 10:18PM (7/30/2009)
Was that from registration or the actual hardware? Could you have bought some tanks and gas injectors, and installed a system to replace, say, half the gasoline with CNG?
Oh, also, does anyone have any info on if there would be issues running a CNG car off of any flammable gas? Since both hydrogen and CNG stations are far and few between, it seams like a car that could run on both CNG and hydrogen combustion would be useful, and would be a good way to hedge your bets (so that you arent screwed if one technology becomes widely adopted and the other one just sort of dies)
axio.matik 8:33AM (7/31/2009)
You should have cashed in on Arizona's CNG boondoggle back in 2001 or so. The legislation passed, and the governer signed, a bill that essentially paid for half of your new car purchase if you converted it to CNG. With no limit on the 'rebate'. People were buying brand new, $50k SUVs, converting them to be able to run on cng (they could still flip back and forth from cng and gasoline), and the state picked up half the tab. If you installed a CNG refilling station on your property, the government pretty much paid for that too. The program cost the state hundreds of millions of dollars before they realized what a mess they created and stopped it.
By the way, at that time, the CNG Civic was available for sale in Arizona, is it not still?
Dave B 5:43PM (7/31/2009)
That AZ program in 2001 was a joke.
They paid HUGE tax breaks for people who bought vehicles that ran on CNG/Propane but also coulds still run on gasoline.
People got the tax break, and the car pool lane permits, and continued to put regular gasoline in the tank.
Most of the vehicles purchased were large trucks. Since the owners ran them on gasoline, they made MORE POLLUTION NOT LESS....
A program designed to decrease pollution actually increased it, becasue they gave them the option to still run on gasoline...
Chris M 7:51PM (7/31/2009)
Lorena Palin: For a CNG vehicle to work with mixes of other flammable gasses would require some modifications in the fuel regulation and injection systems, as the physical characteristics and volumetric energy density varies - possible to do, but not easily or cheaply.
Hydrogen has a much lower volumetric energy density than natural gas, meaning it takes up more room for the same energy. So switching to H2 gas, or a H1/CNG mixture called "hythane", would reduce the driving range, and the driving range of CNG is already somewhat short. Moreover, H2 is quite a bit more expensive than natural gas, so using it would raise the fuel cost. As previously mentioned, the controls would have to be able to adjust to the different fuels, and keep in mind that as the smallest molecule, H2 is leak prone, and dissolves into steel, turning it brittle.
With all those disadvantages, the only advantage is that burning H2 doesn't produce any CO2 and that it can be made from renewable energy sources. Mixes with butane and propane are much more promising.
CaramelZappa 10:13PM (7/30/2009)
Burning natural gas may not pollute like gasoline, but you're still burning it, which creates carbon emissions. One of the big "going green" motives is to reduce and eventually eliminate carbon emissions and greenhouse gasses. Right now electric cars are the only product that has that potential.
CNG might be a great alternative to gasoline, and it's great that it reduces dependence on foreign oil, but if we're going to go green I really think we should do it right.
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dg 10:28PM (7/30/2009)
Agreed, but it's not so simple. In my opinion, electric cars are the future, but they just aren't here yet (nor is anything else). We're left with this gap where trying to switch to anything that IS here now that is better than gasoline just doesn't make much sense when we can see these other, better, long-term solutions nearly perfectly but just out of reach.
Honestly, although still carbon-emitting, I believe hybrids are one of the only things that can help us bridge that gap (assuming BEVs are on the other side). We have hybrids available now, and soon we'll have plug-in hybrids. We'll get used to plugging in more and filling up less, then when (if) BEV's are here for good, we'll already be used to plugging in and we'll just forget about filling up.
If hydrogen or something else ends up being big in the future, I guarantee the transition will be much more messy, but undeniably still a better picture than sticking to gasoline.
CaramelZappa 10:44PM (7/30/2009)
I definitely agree that it's not going to be a simple jump from gas to electric, and I think it's great that hydrogen and CNG and biofuel are all trying to compete to be the next source of fuel. Hybrids are nice, getting people used to using an electric drivetrain is going to be a big help in the transition. It still really bothers me that Toyota hasn't bothered doing their own plug in prius (even if the range was only like 15 miles)
What I don't like is when alternatives that burn their fuel (hydrogen, natural gas, ethanol) are being promoted as "green", when they have no potential to stop carbon emissions.
If our goal is to do MORE than just stop using oil and curb pollution, if we really want no emissions, we need electric cars. It allows the transition to be gradual, without requiring any huge infrastructure changes. From hybrids to plug in hybrids, to range extended electric vehicles (like the volt) and finally pure electric. And all the while we can focus on replacing coal produced energy with solar and wind power. It's not an easy process, but as far as I can see it's a lot simpler than building an entire new infrastructure for any of the other alternitives, and like I said before it's the only path that eliminates carbon emissions. We are on autobloggreen, right?
paul34 11:41AM (7/31/2009)
At the risk of sounding like a broken record, are you aware that the electricity must actually be produced first? A good majority of power all over the world is generated using coal power. You cannot magically replace coal with wind and solar... it doesn't work like that. Not only do wind and solar have a much high dollar per kilowatt cost, but they also take up more room. Wind power can also affect local bird populations, which surely isn't environmentally conscious.
Neither can provide baseload either. They are too variable to be able to provide baseload power like coal, natural gas, and nuclear can. Wind and solar can only supplement relatively small amounts of electricity at non-continuous times throughout the year. Also, good luck convincing people that they have to pay significantly more on their power bills to pay for far more expensive wind and solar for the same electricity.
If you want to move green for electricity production, you need to look to nuclear. It's the best combination of "green" and baseload power we have.
Modern coal power in the US obviously produces carbon emissions, but it's far, far cleaner than people have been led to believe. Technology advances and stricter regulations mean more scrubbers and cleaner burning coal plants. Right now, it's cheap, and the fuel is plentiful and is also mostly sourced from inside the US. You can't say that about many other sources.
Until we figure out cold fusion on a mass scale, a combination of everything with lots of nuclear is what we should be going for right now. Indeed, that is the direction the industry (without government) is going.
CaramelZappa 12:49PM (7/31/2009)
Take a look at Chernobyl and then tell me again that nuclear power is green.
Lorena Palin 10:47PM (7/30/2009)
dg, sorry to attack you. I had just gotten pissed off at several users on here who would start attacking anything diesel.
Now, I think the thing you have to remember with BEVs is that even the best batteries- Lithium Ion, are expensive, bulky, and heavy. I mean some of that can be brought down, but the bottom line is that a battery is a big mass of reacting chemicals that stores energy.
Thats just too much to put in a car and have it be it's fuel tank. I like the series hybrid set up, but I have issues with it. First thing is that if you are making rotational motion with your generator, why the hell are you converting it to electricity and then back into rotation motion? Engines are most efficient at a constant flat rate, which is the natural advantage of this power train, but my question is- if your speed is close enough to what the engine is putting out (like lets say it puts out 30 horsepower at peak efficency, which is good for 50mph in the example) have it go directly to the wheels on a traditional drive train. If the speed you want to go is under, but close, the regen breaking will just come in and keep you at the desired speed. If you want to go faster it will add electric power with motors. Setting up the drive train is an issue, so either a 3 wheeled 1-wheel drive vehicle, or a large truck with lots of space would be ideal. If you aren't putting power to the wheels with your engine, you shouldn't even bother having it produce rotational motion, and just use a vertical alternator instead (no crank shaft, flywheel, variable compression ratio, very good setup)
Now I think another thing is we often loose sight of WHY we are interested in all these green vehicles- because they are good for the planet. See, it's great that all these new things are coming along, but something available now should be put to use.
Now heres what I like about flammable gas (CNG, burning hydrogen...hell, even woodgas):
1- it's clean. Propane, methane, H2, ect... only produce Water and CO2 (H2 dosn't even do that)
2- it's simple. The mythbusters just blew hydrogen into the carburetor of an old car and had it run, wood gas was used in WW2 to run cars with a few garage modifications. it seams flexible and simple
3- gas mixes with air nicely, and is high octane. You see all this fuss being done with fuel vaporizing and new types of injectors all to mix gasoline more thoroughly with air- a gas does that on it's own.
4- Getting the gas can be done a number of "green" ways. H2 can be produced at wind power plants during during low demand periods and/or strong wind (good way to avoid overloading the grid). Useful especially on the many coastal generators. Methan can come from cow crap. Wood gas could be produced in solar heating apparatuses, with geothermal heat, or with electricity produced cleanly during off hours.
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Lorena Palin 10:58PM (7/30/2009)
Caremel-
I just want to point out that biofuels do not inherently put more carbon into the atmosphere. The CO2 put out by burning has already been absorbed during the plant's life cycle. Granted some extra carbon is produced during the processing and shipping, but it's not much.
Electric power that comes from a non-green source is non green. It might beat regular gasoline, but it's still not sustainable. Replacing coal will be a tough prospect, and I doubt it will happen, especially considering that it's what the country has alot of.
I think somone has to figure out a way to make a car that runs on any flammable gas. This would make things alot easier (BTW, as soon as I finish my two stroke motorbike and get a 4 stroke engine to play with I'm going to work on making a variable gas motor, set up for propane, H2, and woodgas)
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