Recently by Eric Peters: Here's What We're Missing …
Whatever happened to CNG Compressed Natural Gas as an alternative fuel?
Back in the mid 90s, I test-drove a few factory-built CNG-powered demonstrator vehicles, including a new Ford Crown Victoria. Unlike most hybrids, the CNG Vic was a proper car: Full-size, six-passenger, V-8 and rear-wheel-drive. It required a few modifications to operate on CNG, mostly to the fuel system, but nothing particularly elaborate or expensive because the powertrain (engine and transmission, etc.) was still the same powertrain as in the standard, gas burning Vic.
The conversion cost at the time was about $2,500 as I recall. This of course is much lower than the cost of building a multiple (and much more complicated) hybrid gas-electric powertrain, with all its specialized components and software to run the works.
At the time, a CNG powered vehicle struck me as a simpler, cheaper, and so more sensible alternative to hybrid vehicles. It still does today 20 years later.
Caveats?
You did lose some trunk space to the CNG tanks, but other than that, there were no functional compromises. The CNG-powered cars I tested drove just like the regular gas-burning versions. In the case of the Crown Vic, this meant I got to drive a nice big car with a nice big V-8 instead of a rinky-dinky compact like the typical hybrid car, powered (if you can call it that) by a wheezy four-cylinder supplemented by an electric motor and batteries.
Oh, wait there was one important difference.
The CNG Vic produced almost no pollution even relative to the almost-pollution-free gas burning modern car, the exhaust stream of of which is 97 percent water vapor and C02 (only an issue if you subscribe to AGW human-caused global warming). Natural gas is naturally an extremely clean-burning fuel, as anyone who has a gas grille knows. Vehicle exhaust emissions could be dramatically and cheaply reduced simply by converting to CNG or encouraging production of more CNG-burning vehicles.
No need for hundreds of pounds of toxic batteries and the attendant environmental abuse necessary to mine/process the materials theyre made from. No worries about electrocuting the EMTs if you get into a wreck.
No Hazmat Suit disposal issues, either.
Did I mention it takes only a few minutes to refuel a CNG vehicle? The nozzle/hook-ups are different (pressurized) but the process is essentially the same as it is when you refuel whatever youre driving now. And takes no more time. You can fuel up and be on your way in minutes as opposed to waiting hours for your hybrid to recharge its batteries.
The Vic I tested was, moreover, capable of switching from CNG to normal gas eliminating any issue with range/refueling. And even then, refueling with CNG shouldnt present a major hassle since we already have a massive infrastructure of natural gas delivery pipelines in place. Homes that use natural gas for heat could be set up with their own private fill-up stations, too.
But heres the Biggie:
CNG is something we have vast, almost incomprehensible quantities of right here in the United States. How vast? The Energy Information Administration says on the order of 2,543 trillion cubic feet of the stuff.
Even the most conservative estimates say theres sufficient CNG within the borders of the U.S. alone to provide for current and projected future needs decades down the road, to 2050 and beyond. There is probably enough CNG within the Earth to keep us rolling (and warm and well-fed) for however long it takes to develop something better.
So how come CNG-powered vehicles never caught on? Most of the major car companies pretty much abandoned development of CNG vehicles for the normal consumer market. One of the few consumer-market CNG vehicles you can buy is sold by Honda (see here for details). But Honda doesnt do much to talk up the CNG Civic and most of the OEMs (including GM) concentrate on fleet duty CNG vehicles for the commercial market.
Instead they focused very publicly on their hybrids.
And that, I suspect, is the answer.
CNG vehicles arent sexy and theyre not politically correct. A six-passenger, V-8 powered big sedan is not what the Watermelons (green on the outside, red on the inside) want the average American to be driving if hes even permitted to drive at all.
Since most people are utterly ignorant about both the abundance of CNG as well as how cleanly it burns, its still depressingly simply to characterize CNG powered vehicles as wasteful of scarce resources (bunk) and not as clean as hybrids (double bunk). If anything, a CNG vehicle is arguably cleaner and greener than a hybrid. The inputs are less and so are the outputs. A side benefit worth mentioning is that because CNG burns so cleanly, oil change intervals can be extended and the engine itself ought to last longer. A standard gas-burning engine already has a service life thats much greater than the economically usable life of a hybrid. A CNG-powered cars engine should be good for 15-plus years and easily (and economically) rebuildable, too. A hybrid powertrain isnt.
Given all this, youd think (at least, Id think) CNG-powered vehicles would be in the limelight, not in the shadows. But it makes sense when you look into it a little and come to grips with the reality that politics and posturing (with a heaping helping of flapdoodle) govern what goes on and what were allowed to buy rather than reason and common sense.