Switching car to natural gas from gasoline?

[jmacshriver]

Why don't we power our Atmos road vehicles with Atmos Natural gas?
And not depend on out of control prices and availability of gasoline.
At this time, only one auto maker is offering a CNG vehicle and it is known as a dedicated unit (no bi-fuel). It is my understanding that no CNG will be offered in the 2007 model year. Other disadvantages of these vehicles include that their traveling distance is usually limited to approximately 100 miles before refill, and their compression infrastructure is expensive and requires extensive maintenance. Auto makers are now concentrating on hybrid engines.

This is off of our company Question/Answer forum. Back when we were Lone Star Gas, they were all for it. Now it's a non issue.

Atmos Gas, That brings back memories of my days at WTAMU. They bought a whole bunch of CNG vehicles back in the late 90's. The profs hated fueling them, and they mostly ran on regular gas. The Texas Agriculture and Experiment Station vehicles were bought new with LP systems. They ran hotter than gas but they still ran nice. It mainly just meant we could go farther between fill ups. I'm now up in Iowa at ISU. And they try to buy vehicles that run on E85. The old Taurus's were nice. They had a button labeled "For Alcohol" , my boss was always mad that a mixed drink didn't come out of the glove box after pushing that button.

John Just rambling on a bit!

 

[KICK]

my fleet had 5 CNG powered test vehicles in the early 90's.

it was a PITA to get them full of fuel.

had to have 3200 psi or more in the tanks to have an adequate amount of fuel for half a days service.

they run extremely clean, when we finally scrapped the project after 5 years, these engines had about 150k miles on them. they were extremely clean as compared to what a Diesel engine would look like at the same mileage.

there is some potential to CNG but it needs to be perfected before I would waste any money on a conversion.

 

[coffeeman]

Hi all

Just listened to a talk show guy who is wondering why we don't use natural gas for cars. He says he "researched" this and Europe has been doing this for years. It's like he thinks they rediscovered the wheel. He made it sound like all one needs to do is get a compressor and a few minor changes on engine. Listing to this guy I'd think I could go to Sears and buy one of these compressors off the shelf. Plug it in like an air compressor and a few twists of a screw driver in the motor and I'm ready to drive.

I think I'm going to get rid of news papers and news programs; both radio and tv. I'll get some music CDs and relax listening to them. NO NEWS IS GOOD NEWS!

Cheers Coffeeman