Honda Revs The Civic For US Natural Gas Pushby Jeff McMahon at Forbes blog
Honda’s plan to sell its Civic Natural Gas in all 50 states this fall positions the Japanese carmaker to take advantage of a market that American industry has been hesitant to enter.
But it’s a market that may blossom if Congress passes T. Boone Pickens’ Nat Gas Act.
The problem with compressed natural gas vehicles has been a lack of filling stations in the U.S. to keep them on the road. The problem with stations has been a lack of vehicles to keep them in business.
For this reason, American government and industry have settled on a strategy of converting fleets to natural gas, including public transit and government fleets, heavy-duty freight fleets that currently rely on diesel, and light-vehicle fleets like taxis that can refuel at a single location.
I
t takes a fleet to support a station, according to the Department of Energy, which offers this advice to people thinking of opening a compressed natural gas filling station:
The first task is to identify customers who will use the station. How many vehicles will use it, and what type? Are there alternative fuel fleets in the area? “In the past some people believed ‘if we build it they will come,’ but many speculative CNG stations have failed,” says Rob Adams, vice president of Marathon, which specializes in CNG station design. “If you don’t know who’s going to use the station, you shouldn’t build it.” There should be a base number of quantifiable customers, such as a local fleet of alternative fuel taxis, to get the station started, says Adams.
via Alternative Fuel News, DOE (pdf)
The U.S. approach has changed little since DOE published that best-practices brochure in 2003, even though the U.S. is much closer to tapping vast domestic sources of natural gas.
In testimony before the House Energy and Commerce Committee on Thursday, natural-gas-vehicle industry spokesman Richard Kolodziej emphasized the potential of natural gas to displace diesel fuel in heavy-duty trucking:
“While there are many options to displace gasoline in light duty vehicles, there are very few options to displace diesel,” he said. “If the role of the federal government is to reduce our dependence on foreign oil, and diesel is one of the problems, natural gas has to be one of the alternatives.”
Kolodziej testified in support of House Resolution 1380 — the New Alternative Transportation to Give Americans Solutions, or NAT GAS Act — which would provide tax credits for companies to buy and manufacture natural gas vehicles and build refueling stations. The bi-partisan bill, part of the Pickens Plan, has broad support, including 180 co-signers.
In testimony, Kolodziej said the bill would help convert fleets to natural gas:
The market tells us that vehicles are the highest value application of all natural-gas uses. Natural gas is the fastest growing alternative fuel globally…. Most of those are smaller sedans, but for a number of reasons, including the sheer geographic size of America, the strategy of the US NGV industry has been to focus on high fuel-use fleets: trash trucks, transit buses, short-haul 18-wheelers, school buses, urban delivery vehicles, shuttles of all kinds, and taxis.”
More stations for fleets will provide more stations for individual motorists—many stations perform double duty—and the bill should foster the market for natural gas vehicles across all sectors. There are about 112,000 NGVs on U.S. roads today compared to more than 12 million worldwide, according to NGVAmerica.org.
The Nat Gas Act will provide incentives for the production of natural gas vehicles in the U.S. Honda has been doing that since 1998, and the company believes now is the time to roll them out nationwide.
In September, a Honda executive told hybridcars.com the company planned to double sales. In April, it announced it will establish the Civic—long the only natural gas light-duty vehicle manufactured in the U.S.—as the first sold in all 50 states.
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