Gadgetory

first the easy part about CNG the part you're gonna like all the main benefits number one cheap here it's about two and a half a little bit more than that per gallon equivalent now this is in California at a time we're paying 420 on up top 474 premium this is a big discount number two it's real clean almost no carbon monoxide output in the exhaust and two-thirds less NOx the stuff that really creates the nasty small number three all the Benny's tax credits maybe some rebates maybe a free HOV Lane pass in your state even a place where hybrids no longer get one it rolls up into a little VIP Club sorts these incentives are very important to ceding the market to getting these markets for clean vehicles to a tipping point where they will take off on their own number four less reliance on foreign energy and we're not a political show so I'm not gonna dive into that but bottom line is America has a lot of natural gas without going anywhere to go shopping for it now the challenges around CNG cars are also a foursome storage energy density fueling and combustion first storage maybe it's better termed infrastructure and distribution your house has a constant connection to a relatively low pressure natural gas source your car needs almost the opposite a very occasional connection to a high-pressure source and that's gonna require some infrastructure whether it's a pumping your house or getting to a pump that is relatively scarce today unlike gasoline or diesel natural gas needs to be compressed maintained that way at filling locations like this and maintained that way in your car a challenge you never encounter with gasoline or diesel CNG cars carry natural gas compressed to just one percent of its natural volume it is really crushed down up to 3600 psi which leads to a possibly bulky and expensive tank and that leads us which is energy density now compressed natural gas has somewhat less energy per a certain volume compared to gasoline or even more so compared to diesel however the biggest challenge around the range has to do not with the density of the fuel but how much you can carry in current car design partly because the cylinder design for a compressed natural gas car has to be a certain size and shape to be that strong number 3600 psi they can make gas tanks any shape to fit them anywhere and hold even more fuel for example on this Honda Civic GX which is basically the flagship of family cars that run on natural gas from the factory you get about 250 miles out of a full but smaller tank of compressed natural gas versus 380 on a tank full of gasoline in the more common version third challenge right now is refueling you probably haven't seen a lot of natural gas pumps at your local gas station that's a process that's underway in the mean time you might be carrying a guide like this that tells you where they are or using the navigation system in a car like this that will tell you where they are when you need one typically these things are going to be operated by utilities fleet companies your local bus fleet for example or maybe one of the new generation of purpose-built consumer refilling stations finally the fourth challenge is all around this area of combustion if you want to run compressed natural gas in your current car you can't it's not like gasoline though they share three letters you've got to do a fairly extensive change of the fuel metering and distribution parts within your vehicle as well as install that high-tech and smaller tank we talked about earlier all in it could be a five to ten thousand dollar conversion jobs quite a lot of folks you now have never done it and once you do a CNG conversion the cartoons to be a little less of a performance car the Civic GX for example is about 1.8 seconds slower to 60 then it's gas engine sibling although most folks who buy these cars don't buy them for dragster performance and finally all this combustion technology and tank technology leads to a more expensive car like most other alternative fuel vehicles there's a five six seven thousand dollar Delta that you've got to work off in cost savings on the fuel as well as whatever rebates or credits are available to you so here's my tech shopping list I'm watching to see where CNG cars are really gonna go first of all keep an eye on tank design we talked about the hurdles in the current tank future designs may involve a couple of new things first of all multi compartment tanks that can be made of small strong compartments linked together shape to fit where the car really wants them that increases capacity as does a technology that would put sort of a honeycomb a carbon honeycomb inside the tank that has much more surface area on which to attach the compressed gas this is all part of a federal government bounty to create a much better lighter higher capacity tank for far less money that can get around these expensive cylinders we're dealing with now next I'm watching home CNG compressor design other it's a filling station for your home you can get these today they cost three four thousand dollars another three thousand to install most folks aren't able to swing that the government's got another bounty program out there saying look who can be the first to bring a five hundred dollar home compressor fueling station on the market that'll get the job done easily overnight from your low-pressure home source then there's fuel cost again not my expertise but the idea that there's a big Delta between natural gas and gasoline is key to the appeal of these vehicles finally fuel sustainability right now we get most of our natural gas out of sources that are prehistoric and our finite going forward there's lot of research being done into getting biomethane methane that is coming from sorts of waste we create all the time and other avenues of life