Why not CNG vehicles? Fill up at home?

None of this is really "new", but an article I read today got me thinking, why don't we have more CNG vehicles right now?

The first argument stereotypically raised is "lack of infrastructure". I know throughout most of the midwest, there's natural gas plumbed right to everybody's house, including mine in Michigan.

They sell nifty home fill/compressing stations (another old article...).
http://www.autoobserver.com/2011/03/brc-fuelmaker-again-selling-phill-home-cng-fuel-station.html that were pushed ala Civic CNG.

Anyways... lots of cheap CNG in the US. Supposedly ~$1.50 per gasoline gallon equivalent.

The tech to make vehicles run has been around for years (fleet trucks / forklifts / etc.) and other countries have done this already.

With $4/gallon gasoline, it seems like being able to fill up at home would be a huge seller, and a large part of the country is already plumbed to take advantage. Seems like this would be the bees knees:

What am I missing here?

Nothing except "approved" conversions cost about $5k-$15k, and are only available for fleet type vehicles due to Uncle Sam's policy and certification.

You can do it yourself at home pretty cheaply from what I understand (I do not know more about it) but then you can only fill up at home and if you have any kind of emission testing near you - you will never get an inspection sticker again. If you live in CA, I think they deport you to a rape/beheading town in mexico.

If you do decide to try - post a build thread. $1.20/gal, super clean burning car sounds pretty good to me.

This guy had a shop set up about half a mile from my house

http://eco-fueler.com/

He has been trying to sell the CNG setup since the 70's. The cars have an on board compressor to fill the tank from your houses natural gas hookup. It is supposed to take hours to fill it up.

The car he is packaging them in is the ugliest and worst engineered thing I have ever seen. Based on a VW aircooled motor and trans. the nastiest 3 wheel 3 passenger shape imaginable.

Kind of glad he closed that shop so I don't have to see them on the road any more.

I looked into this about a year ago. The cars are available pretty cheap on the used markets and you could even buy a new Honda set up for CNG. The problem I ran into was the home refilling station. It appeared they quit selling them in the US. If you got the refill station it did take hours to fill the tank although it could run unattended so you could fill over night. The refill stations where also very expensive. Hopefully there is a new refill station on the market now or someone brings one to market.

Someone will have to correct me, but is the CNG for vehicles the same as in your home? Like Home heating oil vs diesel; same stuff but one paid a road use tax, the other didn't.

We had full size Chevy CNG pickups at work for a while, didn't work out. The tank took half the bed and in cold weather they wouldn't start.

YMMV

Dan

I'd go CNG if the compressors were cheaper, they're like $3k. there's plenty of info out there on forums and such, you just have to search for it.

914Driver wrote: Someone will have to correct me, but is the CNG for vehicles the same as in your home? Like Home heating oil vs diesel; same stuff but one paid a road use tax, the other didn't. We had full size Chevy CNG pickups at work for a while, didn't work out. The tank took half the bed and in cold weather they wouldn't start. YMMV Dan

My buddy was talking about becoming a certified installer so he could do it on his own truck.

Said it starts on gas, then once warm and above a certain RPM switches over to CNG?

z31maniac wrote: Said it starts on gas, then once warm and above a certain RPM switches over to CNG?

I've seen that with grease cars, never CNG.

All of the Shcwan's delivery trucks have been CNG since the fuel shortage in the 70's. They keep huge tanks outside their depots for filling all of the trucks every night. They run them all over the country in all kinds of conditions and haven't switched out yet.

I also noticed over on the Pirate4x4 forum it is a somewhat common replacement on carb'ed engines as it does not run into fueling issues due to extreme angles. I believe they use fork lift equipment for the conversions. I am not sure how it would work on the road long term.

Here in Western PA where we have all of the oil shale fracking, Natural Gas should be super-cheap because of our proximity to the source. But it is the same cost as before they started drilling (at least at my house). I could imagine some people tapping a line into the ground in the back yard and getting off the grid completely!

I guess it was the "fill up at home" concept that I had never considered before that struck me. Even if it's slow, overnight plug in, and go in the morning.

It seems CNG is often equipped to "dual fuel" vehicles as well, so existing gasoline infrastructure could support road trips and such, and the ease of filling up at home would support the majority of day to day commutes and general driving needs.

914Driver wrote: Someone will have to correct me, but is the CNG for vehicles the same as in your home? Like Home heating oil vs diesel; same stuff but one paid a road use tax, the other didn't.

I imagine the government would someday want to get their "road tax" portion. Easiest way I could see to do this would be a 2nd meter, in the same way that many water meters are split for homes to isolate storm/sewer quantity billing.

Seems to me to have a lot of the down sides of an electric conversion. The cost to get set up (quoting from your linked article: "Hebert said the U.S. price for the Phill is $4,500, plus installation.") is high and then you can only fill at home and it takes hours just like an electric car. At least with an electric car you can plug in at work or wherever there's an available outlet.

The reason for the long refill times is the pressure the tanks run at is much, much higher than the pressure your home gas is supplied at. So it's got to accept gas from the lines slowly, compress it to really high PSI and cram it into the tank.

I looked into it when the State of Ohio was selling off their CNG Civics. Those stupid cars went for almost new prices despite being over 10 years old. They were definitely more than buying a used Civic and having the conversion done. The guy that bought them had an oil and natural gas well on his property and so got the gas for free. That's possibly one of the few situations where it would seem worth it to me.

How long does it take to save $4,500 (plus install!) on gas? I spend less than $100/mo for all my vehicles and wouldn't want to get tied to one specific car forever. It seems more likely to waste money than save money.

It also lacks the green factor of electrics. The idea is that you can centralize emissions control, and eventually run the cars on all nuclear + renewable once all the NIMBYs DIAF. But with CNG cars you're using good ol' fossil fuel powered ICEs just as before.

Isn't CNG also less fuel efficient?

I was looking at the Holden website the other day and they have a CNG optional V6, but it got the same mileage as the 6.0 gas V8.

These guys have done a pile of research.I worked on some of their stuff 20+ years ago, and GM poached a couple of their engineers a decade or two ago.

http://www.src.sk.ca/html/research_technology/manufacturing/alt_energy_int_sys/index.cfm

SyntheticBlinkerFluid wrote: Isn't CNG also less fuel efficient? I was looking at the Holden website the other day and they have a CNG optional V6, but it got the same mileage as the 6.0 gas V8.

Yes... and no.

To my understanding, GNG is less efficient than gasoline in a dual-fuel setup because of necessary compromises to make a dual-fuel setup work. In a pure CNG car, CNG would be more efficient than it could be in dual-fuel.

Gasoline requires air to fuel mixture of 14.7 t0 1 Gas is 10 to 1. according to my Bosch Handbook.

EvanR wrote:

SyntheticBlinkerFluid wrote: Isn't CNG also less fuel efficient? I was looking at the Holden website the other day and they have a CNG optional V6, but it got the same mileage as the 6.0 gas V8.

Yes... and no. To my understanding, GNG is less efficient than gasoline in a dual-fuel setup because of necessary compromises to make a dual-fuel setup work. In a pure CNG car, CNG would be more efficient than it could be in dual-fuel.

I just went back to their site and I was incorrect, their engines are LPG. But they still get mileage closer to a V8 even though it's a V6.

I like how they push the "Petrol-Like Range"

EvanR wrote:

SyntheticBlinkerFluid wrote: Isn't CNG also less fuel efficient? I was looking at the Holden website the other day and they have a CNG optional V6, but it got the same mileage as the 6.0 gas V8.

Yes... and no. To my understanding, GNG is less efficient than gasoline in a dual-fuel setup because of necessary compromises to make a dual-fuel setup work. In a pure CNG car, CNG would be more efficient than it could be in dual-fuel.

That is correct. I used to work for a NG distributor.

NG has an equivalent rating to 140 octane. If you modify a vehicle to take advantage of that they will go like snot. But then you can't run it on gasoline.

When you run it dual-fuel then its a pig on NG - no power.