The Cleanest Cars on Earth?: Honda Civic GX and Other Natural Gas Vehicles (NGVs)
Clean Burning Natural Gas Vehicles (NGVs) are hot commodities in some parts of the country, where fuel can sell for as low as $0.63 per gallon.
Unlike the world’s most fuel efficient car (VW’s 285 MPG bullet), the Honda Civic GX looks like a standard passenger vehicle. What makes it special is what you don’t see: tailpipe emissions that are often cleaner than ambient air.
The Civic GX is powered by compressed natural gas—methane—the simplest and cleanest-burning hydrocarbon available. With an economical 113-hp, 1.8-Liter engine, the EPA has called the Civic the “world’s cleanest internal-combustion vehicle” with 90% cleaner emissions than the average gasoline-powered car on the road in 2004.
And get this: in Utah, natural gas can be purchased for $0.63 per gallon.
At $24,590, buying a new Civic GX won’t exactly break your bank account, especially since up to $7,000 will come back to you in the form of state and federal tax credits. But don’t expect to find one easily. The car is only sold in two states, New York and California, and Honda can’t build them fast enough. One dealership said they have over 80 people waiting to buy.
It’s fairly obvious why densely populated states would be interested, especially since natural gas is a readily available source of heating fuel for many parts of the country. Most importantly, the Civic is the Eagle Scout of emissions certifications: it qualified for the California Air Resources Board’s Advanced Technology Partial Zero-Emission Vehicle (AT-PZEV) status, which means that it’s a Super-Ultra-Low-Emission Vehicle (SULEV) with zero-evaporative emissions. To qualify for AT-PZEV, the Civic must also carry a 15-year/150,000-mile warranty on emissions equipment. It also meets EPA’s strict Tier-2, Bin-2 and ILEV certification.
Despite getting the equivalent of a good but not quite amazing 36 MPG highway/24 MPG city, the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE) awarded the Civic the green ribbon as the greenest vehicle of 2008. That’s the fifth consecutive year it’s taken the top prize.
So what’s the downside?
Drawbacks to the Civic GX and other Compressed Natural Gas Vehicles
Earlier this week I was clued-in to the explosion in popularity of compressed natural gas (CNG) vehicles in Southern Utah, and their potential to overwhelm the 91 refueling stations already in place there.
That’s the biggest drawback to NGVs:
- There are only about 1,600 CNG stations nationwide (compared to 200,000 gas stations), though some areas (like Utah and California) are better served than others. To see where these stations are, see the alternative fuel locater from Mapquest (under #2 on that post).
One way to get around this is to buy your own natural gas refueling station. Since a large number of us burn natural gas for heat, this doesn’t require much more than setting up a pump. The refueling kits, made by FuelMaker, will set you back about $3,500, but that can be offset by substantial tax credits.
- Second drawback: since natural gas is a compressed fuel, the tank takes up some trunk space, and only holds the equivalent of 8 gallons of gasoline. Honda estimates the vehicle’s range to be 220 to 250 miles, although Consumer Reports claimed it was closer to 180 miles.
NGV enthusiasts are getting around range limitations (and vehicle scarcity) by converting their own vehicles to run on natural gas and adding spare tank capacity. Throwing extra tanks in the bed of a truck, for example, can boost driving range to around 600 miles. The best part about converting a vehicle (as opposed to the Civic GX) is that if you run out of CNG, the system automatically switches back to gasoline.
- Third drawback: NGVs don’t provide that great of a reduction in greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions when compared to their gasoline counterparts.
According to the industry group Natural Gas Vehicles for America (NGVA), the reduction is only 20%, which is about the same GHG reduction you get from corn-based ethanol. That doesn’t sound too impressive, but it’s still a reduction, and clean air could be worth it.
The big question mark is natural gas supply. If large amounts of biomethane can be produced from biomass (which is probably already done at your local landfill), the emissions reductions would be much greater.
But What About Natural Gas Supply?
Natural gas supplies 20% of all energy use in the US. According to NGVA: “Even if the number of NGVs were to increase 100-fold in the next ten years to 11,000,000 or roughly 5% of the entire vehicle market (a formidable goal), the impact on natural gas supplies and the natural gas delivery infrastructure would be small — equating to about 4 percent of total U.S. natural gas consumption.”
At first glance, that sounds pretty good, but any increase in natural gas usage means importing more fuel.
Taking a look at data from the Energy Information Administration, the US uses about 21.6 trillion cubic feet of natural gas per year, most of which is produced domestically (18.5 trillion cubic feet) with the difference being imported (4.2 trillion cubic feet). Proved natural gas reserves in the US amount to about 211 trillion cubic feet. If my math is correct, without taking into account any increase in demand, the US only has about 11.5 years of natural gas left. After that, we’re back to square one: importing oil from Russia, Qatar, Iran, and Saudi Arabia
Like petroleum, two-thirds of world natural gas supply exists in just a few countries. If we’re at all worried about having domestic (let alone renewable) energy sources, basing the future of US transportation on natural gas puts us right back in the same position we’re in now.
Also like petroleum, there is an “infinite supply” argument: “Don’t worry, we won’t run out… promise.” NGVA says that if we can tap into methane hydrate ice formations that exist under 1000 feet of water at the bottom of the arctic oceans, we’ll be just fine. Right now, this is about as plausible as time travel, and methane hydrates serve a very important function—they’re a crucial sink for carbon dioxide in the global carbon cycle.
Conclusions
Whether or not we’ve learned our lesson about importing foreign energy, natural gas could still provide a functional infrastructure and technology for transition to hydrogen fuel cells. Natural gas is currently the number one feedstock for producing hydrogen, and refueling stations along California’s hydrogen highway may produce the fuel by reforming natural gas on-site. Basically, this gives us a transition fuel until we figure out how to make hydrogen sustainably.
As for the Honda Civic GX, it may be the cleanest-burning vehicle on the market, but the drawbacks listed above are likely to keep NGVs out of mainstream production for the forseeable future. It seems unlikely that natural gas will stay as cheap as it currently is in Utah, but relatively low pricing could keep the car’s popularity high in some areas. It will be interesting to see how things resolve there.
For more on the Honda Civic GX, see Honda’s Website and Consumer Reports. See more pictures below.
For more on Natural Gas, see Natural Gas Cars: CNG Fuel Almost Free in Some Parts of the Country.
Posts Related to Alternative Fuels and Green Car Technology:
- Affordable Electric Cars Coming to US in 2009
- How Biodiesel Fuel-Cells Could Power The Future (And Your Car)
- How Solar Panels Could Power 90% of US Transportation
- Six New Technologies Will Help Manufacturers Reach the 35 MPG Goal (Without Hybrids)
- An Air Car You Could See in 2009: ZPM’s 106 MPG Compressed-Air Hybrid
- Clean Diesel Cars Coming to US This Fall: 2008-2010 Timeline
Photo Credit: Honda
This all sounds good, but in the meantime we need to Drill, Drill, Drill. We can drill our way out of this, we should have done so 30 years ago. I also do not want windmills every where. These new things will take 15 to 20 years to come about, in the meantime we must use what we have OIL.
What about the new clean diesels coming out? We can do this today. You get 20-40% better efficiency and the motors last forever. Don’t need anything to do this, just fill it up. VW is making affordable cars now for this.
I have not heard anyone here talk about re-sale of alternative technology vehicles. One key aspect of car economics is the relatively secure market to re-sell your vehicle for whatever reason (personally I hang on to mine for 10+ years).
If you paid out 24K for this car, what’s the chance that in 5 years its not a dinosaur?
Could its powertrain be easily converted to hydrogen, if H becomes the fuel of choice?
Weel now….If all these fun things are to be implemented, how do we get started? I hear all this talk but see little do. Tomorrow would be nice for us old farts that don’t expect to live for more than 5 or 10 years more, Giddyap!
B
My sister lives in Georgia and said the cost for her natural gas appliances have tripled in the last four years. She is seriously thinking about switching back to electricity. Perhaps the cost in Utah is 63 cents NOW but what would the cost be on the Left Coast or New York?
Electricity is really the answer. All of these other options are intriguing, but you need fueling stations that sell and supply different competing fuels, not to mention the industries that produce them. This follows the gasoline marketing paradigm. You will see multiple “middle-men” getting in line to run up the cost before it reaches the consumer. We need a break from this old school way of delivering energy. Energy needs to be delivered to the consumer with the fewest layers of separation.
Does anyone remember Betamax? I’d hate to be the guy who buys a alternate fuel vehicle and then watches it become obsolete when the forces of the market place squelch the less profitable fuel industries.
You need to focus on the common denominator. It’s clearly electricity. Every energy source that we have available (fossil, renewable, or nuclear) can be easily used to produce electricity with our existing infrastructure. It also allows for integration of future discoveries. Distribution is easy. We all have access to a power source. We’ll need to invest in our grid, but we need to do that anyway.
As previously noted by other comments, our demand will inevitably exceed our supply when it comes to carbon based fuel. We’ll then be back to this situation again. Hydrogen doesn’t make sense. Why use electricity to make hydrogen, so that we can burn it in our cars? Why not simply use the electricity to power the vehicle in the first place? The emissions are comparable, the safety issues are negligible in comparison, and there is significant energy loss in production and distribution of hydrogen. Natural gas provides a reasonable short term solution, but we need to keep our eyes on the ball. When it comes to ground transportation, the internal combustion engine will eventually go the way of the dodo.
The true is that american car companies do not want their cars to run on NG… main reason an auto that runs on NG virtually has no ware on its components. The carbon residue is clean compare to petroleum distillates so good by engine work. I have seen the change of oil on a NG engine and the old oil still looks likes honey.
How can we help get this done in Florida???
Convertint to natrual gas doesnt seem like a bad problem at all. My Parents just changed their oil furnace to gas jusc recientally. but the conversions shouldnt stop just there. I remember not to long ago i was watching on Discovery channel Modern Marvels or something a show on Green Technologies and one that really caught my interest was: Families are choosing now to bury compressor coils more then 6 feet under ground to use as a heat-exchanger to supplement a natural gas burner for winter and air-conditioner for summer. The purpose of burrying the coil underground 6+ feet is that due to the warm earth its at a constant tempreature year round and it can just help make up the difference. As well as using Solar water heaters on the roofs of houses to supplment water heaters. Possibly if those items become a part of mass usage the government can include tax credits on those also.
There appears to be a place for natural gas as a partial solution to our energy crisis. History suggests there is no one perfect choice for most situations. But let us not forget that we need to do all we can to mitigate our dependence on foreign oil. The transfer of wealth out of this country has to be in the long run as harmful to the standard of living in this country as green house gases in the short term. We need to do all we can and right now!
The US needs technologies that can implemented right now, natural appears to be ready for today. Tomorrow
we will have “more perfect solutions”. I want more US dollars staying home!