US looks back to clean-burning CNG

Honda’s Civic GX has been America's greenest car for the last eight consecutive years. So says the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE), an influential Washington DC-based lobby group promoting energy efficiency.

To most, even inside the US, that means nothing without knowing the Civic GX is America's only factory-made CNG powered passenger car. Which explains why, for 2012, the Japanese maker has renamed the car the Civic Natural Gas.

It’s a low-volume affair, good for about 1200 sales a year thanks to a $7K premium over a similarly specified petrol Civic and the paucity of filling points – of 159K retail service stations across the US, only about 1000 have CNG pumps.

But, according to industry analyst Edmunds, the new badge signals change to come. Although demand has always fallen way short of the normal 10-15K thresholds mainstream US carmakers need to commence and continue production, Honda has announced that over 2012 it will near double its production run to 2000 in 2012, and expand its dealer network.

Auto CNG is already popular in parts of the Middle East, Asia and the Subcontinent. As Edmunds points out in a recent report, GM, Ford and Chrysler all made CNG powered commercial vehicles to help meet clean-car requirements until 1998. But then the changing winds of emissions legislation blew their attention towards hybrids and petrol-ethanol flex-fuel technologies instead.

Now, with approval likely for new Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards covering 2017-2025, CNG is coming back into favour again.

On that front, CNG has plenty going for it. With a carbon content estimated at 25-30 per cent lower than liquid fuels, it burns cleaner – by Westport’s estimates, alongside petrol and diesel engines, it cuts emissions by around 20 per cent. That means it leaves engines cleaner, helping cut service and maintenance costs – a major plus for fleet owners. It’s plentiful, and it’s patriotic – virtually all the CNG used in North America is sourced there. And, at about $1.90 a gallon, it’s not much more than half the current price of petrol – enough to mitigate any gap from which it may suffer in energy density and hence fuel consumption.

Analysts are flagging dramatic rises in interest in it as a fuel source. US research agency Pike predicts global sales of CNG-powered vehicles will rise 68 per cent between 2010 (1.9 million sales and 2016 (estimated 3.2 million sales), particularly among fleet owners out to replace liquid fossil fuels wherever they can. In the US, Pike predicts this will translate into a quadrupling of sales between 2012 and 2016, from 8400 to 33,000.

Other makers are looking towards it, too. GM will bring a new generation of bi-fuel larger commercial vehicles to market by Q4 2012, with more to come. The company already sells CNG-powered Chevrolet Express and GMC Savana cargo vans, is working with Californian alternative fuels specialist IMPCO Automotive on a bi-fuel system it says will see its pickups will meet both EPA and California Air Resources Board emissions standards. It has also signed a deal with Canadian CNG engine specialist Westport Innovations to work on natural gas components for its lighter vehicles.

Ford has been working with Westport too, on a bi-fuel conversion package for its F series pickups, while Chrysler has mooted CNG powertrains for its Ram truck. As Edmunds notes, it helps that the latter’s parent company, Fiat, is the world’s largest maker of natural gas vehicles and that, according to Chrysler  engines exec Bob Lee “the technology is very clearly transferable between Europe and the US”.

Toyota has dabbled in it too, with a run of about 300 CNG Camrys for Californian fleet operators in the early 2000s, but any expansion plans it may have had fell away with the exponential rise in public interest in its Hybrid Synergy Drive system with the coming of the second generation Prius. It hasn’t yet completely ditched CNG, however. Indeed it has integrated the two technologies in a CNG-electric hybrid Camry.

All that said, CNG faces a few hindrances yet in its progress to market. Firstly, conversion is costly – much more so than the LPG systems so common in Australia. Honda manages to keep the premium on its Civic Natural Gas down to $7K, but Edmunds says aftermarket conversions are often $10K and more in the US. This could, of course, change with economies of scale.

But there’s also the issue of environmental consequences beyond CO2 emissions. While there’s lots of it in the ground, there’s no shortage of controversy surrounding methods of locating and extracting it, as recent arguments across Australia surrounding so-called ‘fracking’ have shown. As many environmentalists are now asking, what’s the point of all that clean energy when you’re irreparably contaminating the water table get it?

Read the latest news and reviews on your mobile, iPhone or PDA at carsales' mobile site...