Question of the Day: Do Any New Cars Use Compressed Natural Gas?

Alternative fuels have been making noise ever since the summer, when gas prices rose to more than $4 per gallon. One of the alternatives that has seen a lot of support is natural gas — but can you actually buy a car that runs on natural gas? If so, how expensive would it be? And where could you refill it? Ask.cars.com takes you through each of these questions and weighs the pros and cons of a natural-gas vehicle.

Do Any New Cars Use Compressed Natural Gas? (Ask.cars.com)

Comments

There are 9 million CNG in the World. But in the US, we have only 100,000. Developing countries like Argentina, Pakistan & Brazil have more than 1 million + vehicles each.

Its not expensive, it may cost just 1K-2K more, but what we need is a proper infrastructure and help from the Govt. Not necessary for Federal Govt to step in, but atleast the State Govt's can do. Also all the buses from public transport corp's and the schools can do the switch to save a lot of money.

Average American's were so much used to the gas station in the vicinity that they dont consider any other alternative fuel. Luckily E85 is picking up. Hope CNG also picks up. After all the Crude Oil supply is expected to go down in the future.

I HAVE 4 CNG AUTOS AND PUMP MY OWN GAS AT HOME.

We can't afford to convert any substantial percentage of our national fleet to natural gas - it happens to be the fuel of choice for heating homes in the U.S. A couple years ago the price of natural gas doubled because of higher demand and many people could not afford to pay their heating bills. The other reason not to use natural gas for automobiles is because it's a waste of the cleanest of all fossil fuels. When you burn it in a furnace, you get 90 percent efficient use of the fuel. Even electric generation plants are a good use of natural gas because they achieve 60 percent efficency in converting it to electricity. But automobiles only convert 20 percent of the fuel into motion. This is a bad idea at a time when the world's supply of natural gas is declining.

Mr. Red

Oil is very expensive and precious fuel, so wherever Oil is used, it makes economic sense to replace it with natgas.

Already many oil fired electric plants are replaced with other fuels, transport is the next big sector.

Mr. Reid,
I can't agree with you. We are already importing natural gas in liquid form from overseas. What you're advocating is simply replacing one fossil fuel addiction for another to fuel our cars, except that using natural gas will leave us with no reasonably priced fuel to heat our homes. It's a matter of priorities. IMHO staying warm and keeping the lights on trumps transportation.

i have e85 within 16 miles of home at this time. it is not that hard to have you're own distillery to 'brew your own' alcohol based fuel. of course you have to include 2% gas per regulation.

is the best vehicle for alcohol or other alternative fuels a diesel vehicle?

enjoy.