Natural Gas Vehicles and Sportscars
 

I just watched this great TED talk on natural gas and how it can be even better than the petroleum we are using today to fuel everything, especially our cars. I also noticed that Honda has a NGV you can buy right now.

It appears natural gas is a hell of a lot cheaper than petroleum, less emissions and the United States has many many years worth of this stuff underground.

So my question is, when can we expect this technology in sports cars, or is it not even feasible?

http://automobiles.honda.com/civic-n...or-photos.aspx

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature...&v=aIFFFGf1ZRE

$26k for a Civic that has 110BHP, holds 8 Gallons Gasoline Equivalent(GGE), and has very few refilling stations? No thanks. Plus the home chargers, erm, refillers?(I've forgotten the term) are several thousand $$$$. The only advantage over Electric cars is better range and cheaper initial cost.

NG cars are more expensive to build than hybrids and FFVs. Plus NG is always in high demand for heating and power generation. It's even used to make alcohols and hydrogen.

Natural gas public transport/taxi make sense since they have higher fuel costs and are driven more, but the energy density probably would annoy regular suburban drivers. Alternative fuels need to not only be economically viable but just as convenient, imo.

One teacher at my high school had a NG Civic, and I was pretty intrigued so I looked up the closest refueling station...25 miles away. Yea uh...no.

I was in Xian (China) and rode in a dual fuel taxi with both a natural gas and gasoline tank. Since we were touring a bunch of places we drove quite far and the driver had to fill the natural gas like 3 times in a day, but apparently it costs like 1/3 as much to fill with natural gas vs. gasoline that will get you the same range.

There's no technical obstacle standing in the way of a NG sports car, it's just that the car would need to be designed with the packaging of the NG tank(s) in mind. But with the lack of infrastructure it just doesn't make financial sense to design a car for a niche within a niche.

Ummm.. NG cars are cheaper to build than hybrids. There are many hundreds of thousands of NG vehicles on the road today, and they run at only a small premium over the "regular" vehicles they are based on. The problem with NG is not it's demand (it's still cheaper than gasoline) but rather the lack of infastructure, and lack of training of the general populace on refueling.

How do you figure?

Because as I see it, the Civic hybrid is cheaper than the NG version, and the hybrid is a good bit more expensive than the ICE only Civic.

Yep, what he said. I've actually considered owning a NG Civic ever since gas hit $4/gal here in California but very quickly realized that the money I save in fuel economy does not really translate well to usability (not the car, but the infrastructure). There are several fuel stations along my commute route but were kinda out of the way, all are commercial installations that require me to do training ranging from watching a video to actually taking a class for hours. The home refueling systems are expensive, and although there were some rebate programs available, they off-set very little of the cost. On the plus side, still gives you car-pool lane access. The idea of a sports NV is very promising, but a lot of the technology is going towards electric, we'll see how it turns out in the next few years.

That's because they build lots more Hybrid Civics than NG Civics. Also since the NG segment is much smaller (generally limited to fleet vehicles due to difficulty of refueling) there is a higher profit margin built into those cars.

The only componets that need to be different in a NG vehicle compared to a regular car is the fuel and fueling system. Granted the engine needs to be built with a higher compression ratio to take full advantage of NG, but that is a piston or rod change, or taking some off the deck height of the heads.

If you look at buses where the economies of scale are much smaller; NG is way cheaper than hybrids.

That comes with the territory. The fact is, NG has an initial price premium over a hybrid and then you're stuck with the problems of a limited re-fueling infrastructure.

Given that, it just doesn't make logical sense to do it for a civilian vehicle. Fleets? very likely. Sports car? absolutely not.

Meh sports cars already come with a price premium; part of that is due to increased development cost, part is due to more limited sales, and part is just because they can charge more.

Like I said the only reason not to own one is the limited infastructure... There is a bit of a weight penalty as well (about 175lbs or so). With the number of NG vehicles in the world as high as it is (over 12 million) some places (particularily asia) will probably get a NG sports car at some point.

I was pointed to the thread by Allch Chcar. Interesting find.

Here is my 2 cents on NG for sports(y) cars.

First, there are two alternatives, CNG and LPG (liquid propane gas, by-product of oil drilling)

LPG in liquid form stores at 8 times fewer pressure than CNG, but requires very clean air filters to form proper gas-oxygen mixture. Its also can destroy your air intake (LPG backfire in the intake, when not properly tuned or filters are dirty).

CNG is less sensitive to such things, but costs more to install and maintain (pressure in fuel tanks is around 3,000 psi and corresponding fuel lines and closing valves are costly, not mentioning pressure converter)

With any gas, depending on tuning and used equipment, you'll loose 5-20% power and get 5-15% worst fuel economy. So, this alone rules out gas for sporty cars.

But for DD, it is a very good alternative. As I pointed out earlier, I drove ~100K miles total on LPG in EU, which is rather popular alternative fuel there , especially in NL, PO, RU, BG, even DM despite of popularity of diesel cars.

Also, digging around, found this nice talk. If you have time, watch it. Pickens is a smart old man:

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EnmG87c2roE"]T. Boone Pickens on America's Energy Future - YouTube[/ame]

I may even buy some of his company stocks, man has a point and a plan.

When I was living up North, when Taxis were still full size Crown Vics, they were all CNG conversions for cost reasons. And a popular setup on pickups (especially old big block 460s and 454s) was a dual-fuel propane conversion. Also for cost reasons.