neighbor Paying $0.63 a gallon to gas up his car!

[Larry N Johnson]

This topic was in the New, New Chat Thread", but there are so many topics intermixed there, maybe a separate thread would be informative.

What I posted:

BTW, speaking of fuel prices, my neighbor fills his Natural Gas powered Civic GX with natural gas at home: $0.63 a gallon equivalent! That's $0.03 or less a mile for fuel! Prices vary widely in the USA but here in UT that cost is for real at the moment.

This is a domestic resource: We import around 2% of our natural gas via LNG tankers, most of it coming from Trinidad in the Carribean. The other 98% is from the US/Canada. Please click on "Natural Gas Myths at the web site of The American CleanSkies Foundation.

Here is John Mitton's Honda being refueled at home down the street from me:

Then Ron 61 (Ronnie Widener) from Shasta Lake, CA asked:

Larry,

A couple of questions. First what distance or mileage does he get on the car? Second, where I live there is no natural gas line close and it would cost a fortune to have them run one to my house, so do they plan to have commercial outlets available anytime soon?

Thanks,

Ron

Answers:
1. The Honda GX gets about 30 mpg, same a a gasoline power car. The "gas tank" holds about 8 gallones equivalent. So that's a range of 240 miles plus or minus.

2. Regarding natural; gas availability, yes, their are commercial refueling stations. None near you according to http://www.cngprices.com/, a handy map of all the commercial stations. It shows two:
a. Medford, OR at $1.44 a gallon (price may be outdated) and
b. PG&E Chico Service Center
11239 Midway Chico, CA 95928
800-684-4648
This station may require card key access.
This station may require special forms of payment.
$2.67 per gge (Updated 2008-06-12)

So, in your case Natural Gas may not be the answer. Prices and availability vary widly around the country.

[Ron61]

Larry,

Thanks for the answer. And yes, where I live I would use most of the tank just getting from the station home. Plus when you add in the mountains I would guess that just like a gas driven car, the mileage would drop some. But if they keep on, maybe someday it will be practical to have some sort of alternative fuel vehicles out here in the boon docks.

Ron

[Wayne Maybury]

15 to 20 years ago, there were several gas stations that carried natural gas in the Montreal area. Most of the vehicles that were converted to natural gas were taxis and city delivery trucks, in other words vehicles that stayed primarily in the greater city area. For some reason natural gas never took off as an alternative and as far as I know, there are now no gas stations selling it. The conversion process was fairly straight forward and it was fairly easy to switch back to gasoline when the car ran out of natural gas.

Wayne

[427 S/O]

I believe the NG line feeding my house is 4 PSI?, A high pressure pump would be needed to fill an automobile tank.... right?.

[Cobrabill]

So Calafornia Gas Co,which is the largest natural gas provider ON THE PLANET,USED to have CNG fuel vehicles and operate filling stations around LA.Notice i said USED to.They closed all the station and crap-canned the trucks.Gee, i wonder why?

[Joe Wicked]

When I was in the Navy, we had a truck that was CNG. It drove and felt the same as the gas powered one as far as power. The only limitation was the size of the tank. We had a 60 mile range on it. The tank pressure would show good, but 10 miles later would be starving for fuel. We had to keep a log of mileage at fill up and I got in one day and it was at 82 miles since fill up. The station was about 1 mile away across the base and I did not make it. When I started the truck, it kept sputtering at idle. It was very much like a propane grill. By the time the little pressure gauge showed it was a little low, it was too late to make it back to the fuel station, so we made sure it never got to that point by limiting mileage.