CNG vehicles

This is really tempting to me as well...I just need to figure out how to get someone else to pay for it :)

For a setup for your F-150 or your... Ugh... Accord... You could probably do it relatively cheaply. I'll let you know what I come up with.

You get it off the ground I'd like to see the set up. If I could duel fuel my Dodge it could save some decent money.

The payoff is pretty substantial. The big negative here is there are no CNG stations yet, so you have to do a home fueling setup which will add to your initial cost. On the other hand that means you never have to go to a gas station. The payoff in terms of miles driven is something like 35-60k for us, depending on investment. That includes converting both vehicles and buying the home fill unit. This is before negotiating other incentives.

I forget where exactly you live. We're in Hamilton which has its own utility company. I think that gives me some leverage since it's a small local entity vs Duke, which might change things up.
 
For a setup for your F-150 or your... Ugh... Accord... You could probably do it relatively cheaply. I'll let you know what I come up with.



The payoff is pretty substantial. The big negative here is there are no CNG stations yet, so you have to do a home fueling setup which will add to your initial cost. On the other hand that means you never have to go to a gas station. The payoff in terms of miles driven is something like 35-60k for us, depending on investment. That includes converting both vehicles and buying the home fill unit. This is before negotiating other incentives.

I forget where exactly you live. We're in Hamilton which has its own utility company. I think that gives me some leverage since it's a small local entity vs Duke, which might change things up.
I don't think I'd bother with doing it on the Accord. On the F150 it's pretty tempting and would be a relatively easy thing to accomplish I'm sure since there was a factory option for it.

Maybe we can have a CNG installing party
 
The irony is the worse your mileage, the better the payoff. Meanwhile people go and buy Civics where the cost delta is minimal.

From the numbers we talked last night, your break even point on the F-150 would probably be 10-16k miles. So pretty quick. Although I think it's harder to justify once you start driving the Accord.

Come on out and we can do the install. Would be fun to convert a 421 to CNG just for no reason whatsoever.
 
I'm on grid with Duke, one of the biggest issues for me is I have a detached garage, so I'd need to have gas piped out to it
 
Someone with good salesmanship skills should contact T Boone Pickens with this positive energy for CNG.... I bet he will fund it to get good feedback and publicity...:dunno::yes:..

The worse he/they could say is No Thanks...
 
Good idea, Ben!
 
Well, did a bit more research and gave this some serious consideration. For now, we're not interested.

The Phill is really the only home refueler that is very usable right now. It costs $5,000 and has poor reliability that basically adds $1/gge, and that's not including purchase costs. There are more reliable units out there, but they cost $7,500+ and must be installed outdoors. They also have less than perfect reliability, add around $0.30/gge, but a significantly higher purchase cost. For both units, expect an overnight fill time for the vehicle.

The poor reliability and high cost of the home fill units is the big detractor for me. The couple grand per vehicle to convert is fine, but to then have to spend a bunch of money and time on fixing the home fill unit (they said to expect monthly repairs) is a non-starter for me. I have enough projects that I need to tinker on, and adding something like that requiring regular maintenance is not something I'm really interested in.

With these add-ons in price, the break even point pushes out to 100k or more combined vehicle miles, which is too long of a payback for me to consider it worthwhile, especially on vehicles that have over 150k on them right now and our relatively low yearly driving.

Next year, our city is looking to add a public CNG quick refueling station, which might make the prospect more appealing and make the payback worthwhile, depending on its location and what they charge for GGEs. Also, there's another home refueler that's supposed to get released next year (EcoWise), which is supposed to be a much better option. So that might also shift the balance.

When I talked to the guy who sells the home refueling units, he basically told me right now it didn't make sense for individuals. He expects that dynamic will change as more fleets converted and thus more quick-fill stations pop up, as well as improvements in home-fill technology.

The summary is it's coming, it just doesn't make financial sense yet. We're going to focus our money on infrastructure upgrades with a faster payback and that improve reliability.
 
Well, did a bit more research and gave this some serious consideration. For now, we're not interested.

The Phill is really the only home refueler that is very usable right now. It costs $5,000 and has poor reliability that basically adds $1/gge, and that's not including purchase costs. There are more reliable units out there, but they cost $7,500+ and must be installed outdoors. They also have less than perfect reliability, add around $0.30/gge, but a significantly higher purchase cost. For both units, expect an overnight fill time for the vehicle.

The poor reliability and high cost of the home fill units is the big detractor for me. The couple grand per vehicle to convert is fine, but to then have to spend a bunch of money and time on fixing the home fill unit (they said to expect monthly repairs) is a non-starter for me. I have enough projects that I need to tinker on, and adding something like that requiring regular maintenance is not something I'm really interested in.

With these add-ons in price, the break even point pushes out to 100k or more combined vehicle miles, which is too long of a payback for me to consider it worthwhile, especially on vehicles that have over 150k on them right now and our relatively low yearly driving.

Next year, our city is looking to add a public CNG quick refueling station, which might make the prospect more appealing and make the payback worthwhile, depending on its location and what they charge for GGEs. Also, there's another home refueler that's supposed to get released next year (EcoWise), which is supposed to be a much better option. So that might also shift the balance.

When I talked to the guy who sells the home refueling units, he basically told me right now it didn't make sense for individuals. He expects that dynamic will change as more fleets converted and thus more quick-fill stations pop up, as well as improvements in home-fill technology.

The summary is it's coming, it just doesn't make financial sense yet. We're going to focus our money on infrastructure upgrades with a faster payback and that improve reliability.


Interesting. Thanks for doing the homework for me. :) I'll have to talk to my uncle about this next time I see him. He works for a natural gas company in Alabama. Their company actually went back to non-cng powered vehicles on their last fleet refresh which I thought was interesting.
 
Interesting. Thanks for doing the homework for me. :) I'll have to talk to my uncle about this next time I see him. He works for a natural gas company in Alabama. Their company actually went back to non-cng powered vehicles on their last fleet refresh which I thought was interesting.

You absolutely have to do local driving for it to make sense. We do now, so it can work. But the home fuel units just aren't very good yet.

I think a lot of the paradox is the need to have high pressure to have reasonable fuel capacity, but high pressure is really hard to make, and thus expensive.
 
The home-fuel units do still have some room for improvement. If you don't currently have easy access to a commercial fueling station then the CNG is not likely to be an attractive option. The commercial options (order it from the factory with CNG) carries a price that puts breakeven at about 100k miles, which won't work for most people.

In my case, it's attractive because I drive past a commercial fueling station twice a day every day, and I average about 50,000 miles per year. I put a lot of miles on my vehicles and I keep them a long time - so I have no doubt that I'll keep it long enough to exceed my breakeven point. It certainly won't work for the masses today, but it fits my world today.
 
If I was able to drive past a commercial fueling station every day and the price was around the $1.50-$2/gallon range (which I think would be accurate) then that would get the break even point to about 20k miles for my VR4 (probably less for Laurie's Avalanche) and make the conversion worth considering. I would much prefer to be burning natural gas and reducing emissions (no, I won't consider buying a more efficient car) and also burning fuel that comes from the US and not from the Middle East.

I can't say it's surprising that the home fueling stations leave something to be desired.You're talking about trying to make something that's still inherently an industrial device usable for the home, and sold in low quantities. I do think that the commercial stations will be popping up more and more, though.
 
If I was able to drive past a commercial fueling station every day and the price was around the $1.50-$2/gallon range (which I think would be accurate) then that would get the break even point to about 20k miles for my VR4 (probably less for Laurie's Avalanche) and make the conversion worth considering. I would much prefer to be burning natural gas and reducing emissions (no, I won't consider buying a more efficient car) and also burning fuel that comes from the US and not from the Middle East.

I can't say it's surprising that the home fueling stations leave something to be desired.You're talking about trying to make something that's still inherently an industrial device usable for the home, and sold in low quantities. I do think that the commercial stations will be popping up more and more, though.


I could home brew a home fueling station using off the shelf parts for fractions of what they want.....

The main pushback / high hurdle is coming from the guvmint as they know damn well there is NO way for them to collect road tax, which in some places is close to a buck a gallon... That lost revenue scares the crap out of the grubby politicians...
 
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What happened with/what is the story behind the home refuellers that Honda offered (for a price) with the CNG Civics?

What is different on a CNG compressor from a SCUBA compressor?
 
What happened with/what is the story behind the home refuellers that Honda offered (for a price) with the CNG Civics?

What is different on a CNG compressor from a SCUBA compressor?

Physics and thermodynamics wise, not a blooming thing assuming you account for the obvious gas property differences - it's not a high hurdle. The vast majority of people don't have the ability to home-roll their own home refueling station, so the market charges a high premium for it.

I actually do have the ability to homeroll my own - but I don't have natural gas at my home, so there is no point.
 
What happened with/what is the story behind the home refuellers that Honda offered (for a price) with the CNG Civics?

That one is called the "Phill" from Fuelmaker. It seems to be the least reliable option, and only will pump about 0.4 GGE/hr. So in other words, if your current commute burns 4 gallons a day, it will take you 10 hours to fill up your car with the Phill - every day.

The lack of reliability causes problems. I was told to expect at least a once per month repair on the Phill, which means that there's not only a direct monetary expense but also a time expense when you can't be filling on CNG and must burn gasoline.
 
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