Sales of natural gas vehicles evaporate

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

Last summer, with gasoline prices in the ionosphere, interest in cars that ran on compressed natural gas (instead of the liquid stuff) surged. When oil prices collapsed ... not so much.

Among the victims of the short-lived natural gas hype are car sales professionals like Alex Tissot, who, as general manager of Colonial Honda in Glendale, ordered up a mess of natural gas-powered Honda Civic GX sedans last summer, only to find them impossible to sell as the price of fuel dropped below the $2.50 mark.

He and others are victims of a sales problem described in today's paper: Crashing demand for alternative powertrain vehicles as gas prices decline.

At the height of the gasoline crisis, ordering up 10 natural gas cars seemed like a great idea. After all, when the average price of a gallon of unleaded is $4.11, buying a vehicle that runs on compressed methane at the equivalent per-gallon price of about $2.20 -- and spewing out fewer contaminants while you're at it -- makes a lot of sense.

Natural gas mania swept the nation. Scarcely 10 days after gas hit that high water mark on July 7, then-Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-ll) introduced legislation requiring U.S. automakers to make 10% of their fleets run on natural gas within a decade.

As the maker of the only natural-gas-powered passenger car available to consumers, Honda Motor Co. smelled a market opportunity big enough to drive, well, a compact sedan through....

The Japanese automaker had been selling the four-cylinder sedan to the public in California and New York since 2005, after half a dozen years of selling it to commercial fleets. With demand high, the company said it would double production of the Civic GX to 2,000 units and also pledged to make them only in its new Indiana factory.

The car sold like hotcakes, and reports of dealers charging as much as $8,000 over sticker were rampant. Toyota Motor Corp. said it would consider producing a natural-gas-driven Camry and put a natural gas hybrid concept car on display at the L.A. Auto Show. Conspiracy theorists argued that Honda was artificially suppressing supplies of the GX.

With natural gas extremely cheap in some markets, and fast becoming a standard for fleet vehicles, buses and taxis in countries like Argentina, burning methane, rather than octane, seemed like a natural.

And then the bottom fell out. Oil dropped like a stone and pump prices followed soon behind. By the new year, the price advantage held by natural gas had shrunk to as little as 50 cents in many places. Suddenly, many of the practical problems associated with natural gas as a transportation fuel reared their heads.

First and foremost: a lack of infrastructure. Within 500 miles of Los Angeles, there are only 249 compressed natural gas stations, compared to tens of thousands of gas stations, and drivers of the vehicles learn to map out where they can refuel very carefully.

On top of that, the range of a fully fueled Civic GX is less than 250 miles, compared to close to 400 for the gasoline-powered version. This means more pit stops to the already thin network of fueling stations.

And then there's the price. Starting at $25,190, the Civic GX costs $1,540 more than the Civic hybrid and a whopping $9,608 more than the regular Civic. It would take a compressed ton (or three) of natural gas to make up that difference.

Although he concedes that "when gas prices were high, the GX was a much easier sell," Honda spokesman Chris Martin said the company sold out its complete 2008 production run of the vehicle and plans to continue its level of production of the Civic GX in 2009. He said the company doesn't break out dealership sales of the GX in its monthly sales releases.

Now, six months after he ordered the 10 Civic GX vehicles, Tissot still has seven left. "I can't get rid of them. The last one I sold was in December," said Tissot. As for the price, at this point, he said, "I can be extremely flexible on them."

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/uptospeed/...nda-ngv-gx.html

[Heracles 417]

People are obviously short-sighted and don't realize that gas prices will go back to $4 a gallon again.

PS Natural gas is a silly idea anyway. We need to use LPG (Liquid Petroleum Gas) which actually gets a greater range than a gasoline run engine. I have a car back in AUS which is dual fuel and a tank of LPG goes much further than running on petrol.

Edited March 17, 2009 by Constellation

[NickD 202]

People are obviously short-sighted and don't realize that gas prices will go back to $4 a gallon again.

PS Natural gas is a silly idea anyway. We need to use LPG (Liquid Petroleum Gas) which actually gets a greater range than a gasoline run engine. I have a car back in AUS which is dual fuel and a tank of LPG goes much further than running on petrol.

Same with ethanol production, not only did the price of gas drop below two bucks a gallon, but a bushel of corn skyrocketed from a buck fifty to over nine bucks. Two plants shut down, with the other seven having major financial problems.

But this oil price roller coaster ride has been going on since the energy crisis back in 1974 with no help from the government to deregulate gasoline prices, and no claims of price fixing between the major players. Price goes up, people invest in alternate forms, oil companies see a threat, so drop prices causing those investors to lose millions. But this is the first time the oil companies really stuck it to the automotive manufacturers, and darn near killed the airlines, so it will be interesting where they go from here. Also the power boat and RV businesses have gone to hell. All of these products are useless without the fuel to power them and that fuel is gasoline.

[Danno 1,228]

People are obviously short-sighted and don't realize that gas prices will go back to $4 a gallon again.

PS Natural gas is a silly idea anyway. We need to use LPG (Liquid Petroleum Gas) which actually gets a greater range than a gasoline run engine. I have a car back in AUS which is dual fuel and a tank of LPG goes much further than running on petrol.

Same with ethanol production, not only did the price of gas drop below two bucks a gallon, but a bushel of corn skyrocketed from a buck fifty to over nine bucks. Two plants shut down, with the other seven having major financial problems.

But this oil price roller coaster ride has been going on since the energy crisis back in 1974 with no help from the government to deregulate gasoline prices, and no claims of price fixing between the major players. Price goes up, people invest in alternate forms, oil companies see a threat, so drop prices causing those investors to lose millions. But this is the first time the oil companies really stuck it to the automotive manufacturers, and darn near killed the airlines, so it will be interesting where they go from here. Also the power boat and RV businesses have gone to hell. All of these products are useless without the fuel to power them and that fuel is gasoline.

Thats because the internal combustion engine is still the best thing out there, hell they can't even get a rechargable Weed-wacker to operate worth a damn.

[DEDixon 39]

People are obviously short-sighted and don't realize that gas prices will go back to $4 a gallon again.

I'm not so sure oil will go up to 4 a gallon. Iraq has the second largest supply in the world and Iraq isn't even pumping out that much, but when they do, supply will be overflowing. Trying to get Iraq to cut back will be difficult for it is their only resource to sell. All the other OPEC countries won't want to cut back, because they depend on the revenues. The oil market isn't so easily predictable.

BTW, the run up we had last year wasn't based on a supply issue, it was financial types running up the price of oil for profits like they do everything else. There were no lines at the pump so no shortage and so no reason for oil to go up like it did.... amazing what Wall Street types can do to us over and over again just so they can make a buck. If you don't believe me, watch Jon Steward interview Jim Cramer.

[NickD 202]

People are obviously short-sighted and don't realize that gas prices will go back to $4 a gallon again.

PS Natural gas is a silly idea anyway. We need to use LPG (Liquid Petroleum Gas) which actually gets a greater range than a gasoline run engine. I have a car back in AUS which is dual fuel and a tank of LPG goes much further than running on petrol.

Same with ethanol production, not only did the price of gas drop below two bucks a gallon, but a bushel of corn skyrocketed from a buck fifty to over nine bucks. Two plants shut down, with the other seven having major financial problems.

But this oil price roller coaster ride has been going on since the energy crisis back in 1974 with no help from the government to deregulate gasoline prices, and no claims of price fixing between the major players. Price goes up, people invest in alternate forms, oil companies see a threat, so drop prices causing those investors to lose millions. But this is the first time the oil companies really stuck it to the automotive manufacturers, and darn near killed the airlines, so it will be interesting where they go from here. Also the power boat and RV businesses have gone to hell. All of these products are useless without the fuel to power them and that fuel is gasoline.

Thats because the internal combustion engine is still the best thing out there, hell they can't even get a rechargable Weed-wacker to operate worth a damn.

IC engine is a piece of #######, was from the start and still is with an extremely poor 15% average in efficiency. Practically no torque or horsepower at the low end and requires a very expensive transmission to perform at all. You don't see those on an external combustion engine such as a steam locomotive, matter of fact, only uses a very simple valve for forward or reverse with enough starting torque to pull a mile long train.

But it's inefficiency comes in when trying to make steam with a very inefficient boiler. That too has changed over the years, boilers can be made today with about 95% efficiency, but why boil water? Just raising a refrigerant in a closed loop system to a couple of hundred degrees can product 600 psi pressures. If applied to a single 5" diameter piston, that would generate a force 12,000 pounds to the rear wheels, that would get you moving, also with a reversing valve stolen from the steam engines to eliminate the transmission, and the heater for that refrigerant can be stolen from the latest home furnaces, and the pressure safety devices from the AC field. So a vehicle with 95% efficiency is possible, can be made very light weight and get 200 mpg instead of 30 with ample power left over of heating and cooling the vehicle.

Just a question of doing it.

Oh buy using a nice blue flame natural gas that we have plenty of NOx's, HC's, and CO would no longer be a problem getting rid of all that super expensive emission devices we have to pay for today. But can't do that with a oil company fed congress where wars are preferred instead to make yet another segment of the population super rich.

That middleman ####### is BS, like Exxon and others are using middleman to eat up their profits, it's all BS. All you hear is BS and more BS and more BS.

[Saddle Bronc 124]

People are obviously short-sighted and don't realize that gas prices will go back to $4 a gallon again.

PS Natural gas is a silly idea anyway. We need to use LPG (Liquid Petroleum Gas) which actually gets a greater range than a gasoline run engine. I have a car back in AUS which is dual fuel and a tank of LPG goes much further than running on petrol.

The one problem with LPG is that it nulls-out the car's bootspace.

(the CNG cylinder doesn't, but only because it's usually way too small to give much range )

[Heracles 417]

Thats because the internal combustion engine is still the best thing out there, hell they can't even get a rechargable Weed-wacker to operate worth a damn.

LPG utilizes the same engine. Actually any car can be modified to use it. The only difference is that you car will run on LPG rather than Petrol.

[Heracles 417]

The one problem with LPG is that it nulls-out the car's bootspace.

(the CNG cylinder doesn't, but only because it's usually way too small to give much range )

True. But you can get LPG only models in AUS which take care of this problem as they only have a LPG tank in them. Plus these models also get a hundred or so more miles than than running on fuel.