Honda Cars : Advantages of natural gas cars lost in buzz for electrics | 2013 New Honda Car Reviews 0

Very interesting article....

Peggy McGuire, uses the quick release connection to fill up her natural gas Honda Civic.

By Julie Wernau, Chicago Tribune reporter

Four years ago President Barack Obama unveiled his vision of 1 million plug-in vehicles on U.S. roads by 2015, pumping about $5 billion in federal funding into electric cars.

But then Natural Gas prices fell to roughly half the price of gasoline. Now a stodgy, undersubsidized horde of natural gas vehicles is catching on with everyday consumers despite a paucity of marketing or fueling infrastructure.

By year-end, 123,600 natural gas vehicles will be on U.S. roads, compared with 65,500 plug-in vehicles, Pike Research's Smart Transportation practice estimates.

Some experts wonder whether the U.S. chose the wrong technology to support.

"Hindsight is always 20-20," said Christopher Knittel, the William Barton Rogers Professor of Energy Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Sloan School of Management. "The drop in natural gas prices brings up an interesting issue, which is, which technology do we want to put our money behind?"

Right now, the money is behind electric vehicles, but that could change.

In February, the Obama administration proposed that the plug-in tax credit be increased to $10,000 from $7,500 and extended to other alternative fuel vehicles, including natural gas. It's a change experts say could make natural gas-fueled cars far more price competitive. In response to demand from motorists, the Honda Civic Natural Gas car is being displayed in showrooms nationwide for the first time since it was introduced in 1998.

This month, the Department of Energy, a strong promoter of electric vehicles, awarded $30 million in research and development funding aimed at reducing the costs of making natural gas vehicles and building natural gas filling stations. Several companies, including Lisle-based Navistar Inc., have announced massive filling station buildouts along major truck routes that would be available to the public.

The interest in plug-ins traces to at least 2008, when gasoline prices seemed headed to $5 a gallon.
The following year the federal government earmarked $2 billion in Recovery Act dollars for makers of batteries and other components for plug-in vehicles and another $400 million to build a charging infrastructure. The Department of Energy pitched in with $2.4 billion in loans to Nissan, Tesla and Fisker to support plug-in manufacturing.

In addition, consumers were enticed into buying electrics with a tax credit of up to $7,500.

While there is no federal tax credit for natural gas vehicles, some states have offered incentives. In Illinois, for instance, buyers of natural gas vehicles receive a credit of up to $4,000. A Honda Civic Natural Gas is priced about $5,650 more than a gasoline-powered Civic EX. The vehicles are less expensive than electric vehicles. The Ford Focus Electric is priced $22,700 above the gasoline version.

"Natural gas vehicles just don't have the cost challenges that electric vehicles do. You don't need that same level of incentive," said Dave Hurst, a senior research analyst at Pike Research, which studies the electric and natural gas vehicle markets. "I think the more interesting question is, why aren't there more incentives on the infrastructure side for natural gas?"

So far, public fueling stations for natural gas vehicles have not received the same support as charging stations, although some dollars have flowed to companies vowing to provide public access.

"In some ways it's pretty similar to the challenges we're seeing on the electric vehicle front," Hurst said. "Should infrastructure lead the vehicles, or should vehicles lead the infrastructure?"

To encourage sales of its new line of natural gas-powered heavy-duty trucks, Navistar is partnering with California-based Clean Energy  Fuels, which will build 150 natural gas fueling stations, all of which will be available to the public.

Pike estimates 1,358 natural gas refueling stations will be available in the U.S. by the end of the year, about half of them private. That number is about 1 percent of the 100,000 charging stations that Pike estimates will be up and running at year-end.

Why the discrepancy in stations serving electric versus gas vehicles?

Natural gas vehicle makers for years have focused on business owners and fleet operators, not average consumers, said Hurst.

"Electric vehicles are more well-suited to the consumer market," he said. "But when you start getting into these medium-duty and heavy-duty trucks, electric is never going to be a great solution for those. Those vehicles use a tremendous amount of fuel and (get) just a couple of miles per gallon."

In addition, natural gas filling stations, which require expensive compressors and massive highly reinforced storage tanks, are costly to build, roughly $500,000 to $1.5 million, compared with $200,000 to $400,000 for a traditional gasoline station or $50,000 for the most expensive charging stations.

The hunger for natural gas vehicles has put Honda in an enviable position. It offers the only sedan that's sold as a natural gas vehicle.

When it introduced its Natural Gas vehicle in 1998, 80 percent of sales were for fleet use, said Eric Rosenberg, assistant manager of sales and marketing for Civic Natural Gas. But when gasoline prices soared as natural gas prices fell, consumer interest perked up.

"When we passed $4, it was crazy," Rosenberg said. "We were selling cars like packs of
The car has never been featured in its own TV ad. But last year consumers accounted for 81 percent of sales. This year sales have been up an average of 30 to 40 percent each month from previous sales records.

"We're waiting to be the country's darling here," said Rosenberg, who said he has a small marketing budget that allows him to produce brochures for dealers and trade shows.

Tony Lindsay, director of research and development for the Gas Technology Institute in Des Plaines, said it isn't difficult to see why consumers are turning toward natural gas vehicles. New technology has opened up vast natural gas deposits in the U.S., and prices have fallen to around $2 to $3 per million British thermal units, a price that puts fueling costs at the pump at about two-thirds to half that of gasoline.

"It's affordable, American and abundant," Lindsay said. He added that natural gas is nontoxic, noncorrosive and noncarcinogenic. It also won't seep into the ground and contaminate groundwater, as can be the case with liquid fuels.

So why haven't natural gas vehicle sales been even more robust?

Rich Kolodziej, president of Natural Gas Vehicles for America, which promotes natural gas and biomethane as transportation fuels, said automakers produce what people want to buy or what they're forced to make. He said a movement started in California doesn't bode well for natural gas car sales.

Kolodziej said California will require that 15.4 percent of new vehicles sold there by model year 2025 have zero tailpipe emissions. Natural gas vehicles have significantly lower emissions than gasoline vehicles but would not meet California's mandate.

Advocates argue that if the pollution caused by electricity production were added into the equation, natural gas would fare as a cleaner alternative to electricity. So far, however, 10 states and the District of Columbia have indicated they will follow California's lead.

Source;
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2012-07-29/business/ct-biz-0729-natural-gas-cars-20120729_1_natural-gas-plug-in-vehicles-ford-focus-electric

Honda Cars : Honda Looks to U.S. Dealers to Boost Natural Gas Station Network | 2013 New Honda Car Reviews 0

Honda Motor Co. (7267), the only automaker selling compressed natural gas-powered cars to U.S. drivers, wants some of its dealers to also install pumps to sell the fuel as its seeks to double sales of CNG vehicles.

Boosting sales of Indiana-built Civic Natural Gas sedans requires more fuel stations, Steve Center, U.S. vice president for environmental business development, said in an interview. Honda is negotiating with regulators in California, the biggest U.S. market for CNG vehicles, seeking to have pumps placed at two or more Honda dealerships this year, he said yesterday.

“If the dealer had a fueling station, it would really reduce some of that concern for the customer,” Center said at Honda’s U.S. headquarters in Torrance, California. “It’s not our place to create infrastructure, but it’s a chicken-and-egg situation and we’re going to have to nurse that egg along.”

Honda’s strategy of marketing autos powered by natural gas, a domestically sourced fuel that’s cheaper than gasoline and emits less tailpipe exhaust, comes as U.S.-based competitors plan their own CNG models. General Motors Co. (GM) and Chrysler Group LLC this week both said they’re readying pickups that will run on the fuel.

The U.S. yesterday raised its forecast for natural gas output in 2012 by 0.4 percent and lowered its outlook for prices. Marketed gas production will average 67.91 billion cubic feet a day in 2012, up from 67.64 billion estimated in February, the Energy Department said in its monthly Short-Term Energy Outlook, released in Washington.

Unanswered Questions
The equivalent of a gallon of compressed natural gas cost an average of $2.13 in January, compared with $3.37 for regular gasoline, according to the Energy Department.

The International Association for Natural Gas Vehicles says on its website there were 1,000 stations and 112,000 natural gas vehicles in the U.S. as of December 2010.

“We’re adding stations rapidly,” said Richard Kolodziej, president of NGV America, a Washington-based trade group that lobbies for natural gas vehicles. “ If you are in an area where there aren’t any fueling stations, this is a great option,” he said of Honda’s plan.

Currently, 270 U.S. Honda dealers plan to sell the Civic Natural Gas, a revamped version of the Civic GX compact sold since the 1990s. The Tokyo-based carmaker’s initial goal is to sell “4,000 to 5,000” CNG vehicles annually, double the previous rate, Center said. Honda builds the model at its Greensburg, Indiana, plant.

‘Fill in Holes’
Details such as the cost of a CNG station at a dealership, how many vehicles it could serve a day and how many such facilities may be established are still being studied, Center said. Honda can work with dealers to obtain needed permits, apply for public incentives and provide financing, he said.

“Something like this helps fill in holes,” Center said. “We want to select a couple of test cases and walk through it.”

Honda hasn’t determined how many such dealer fuel stations may be opened in California and other states, he said. Center, whose previous assignments at Honda included managing U.S. advertising and Acura sales, said part of his new job includes finding uses for environmentally friendly technologies developed by the company.

The Civic Natural Gas sedan costs $26,155, or $2,100 more than a hybrid version of the compact model. The car was named 2012 Green Car of the Year at the Los Angeles auto show in November.

The car averages 31 miles per gallon equivalent of fuel, and holds the equivalent of 8 gallons of compressed gas. Incentives for owners in California include a permit allowing a driver without passengers to use highway carpool lanes.

Source;
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/print/2012-03-07/honda-looks-to-u-s-dealers-to-boost-natural-gas-station-network.html

Honda Cars : Natural-gas-powered Honda Civic can stay in California carpool lane | 2013 New Honda Car Reviews 0

By JAKE LINGEMAN on 7/11/2011
Honda Civic GX drivers in California are smiling this week as they continue to have access to the high-occupancy-vehicle lane, even with just one person in the car. Even though one-occupant hybrid cars have lost access to the carpool lane, natural-gas-powered vehicles get to use it for another four years.

Beginning on July 1, yellow-stickered partial hybrids were banned from HOV areas on the highways unless they carried the mandated number of people. Natural-gas-powered cars and fully electric cars with the super-ultralow-emission-vehicle notation get a white sticker. Both the Nissan Leaf and the Tesla Roadster also fit the mold.

Demand for the natural-gas-powered Honda is up, with sales tripling over the same period last year. Owners of no-longer-exempt cars have gone to dealerships in droves trying to snatch up the remaining copies, new or used. Dave Conant, owner of Conant Auto Retail Group, told Automotive News that he found only one or two used models that were available as of last week.

Unfortunately for Honda, and for HOV-lane drivers, the 2012 Civic NGV won't be ready until the fall. It has a 1.8-liter engine capable of delivering 110 hp and 106 lb-ft of torque. It gets 31 mpg combined in the gasoline-gallon equivalent. New interior features include a multi-information display and, for the first time, navigation.

The price of natural gas historically has been about 30 percent less per gasoline-gallon-equivalent compared with gasoline.

Source;

http://www.autoweek.com/article/20110711/CARNEWS/110719982

Honda Cars : 2012 Honda Civic Natural Gas Information Review | 2013 New Honda Car Reviews 0

Hmmm.... maybe Honda's onto something here....
Honda Revs The Civic For US Natural Gas Push

by 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.

For the rest of the article;

http://blogs.forbes.com/jeffmcmahon/2011/05/09/honda-revs-the-civic-for-us-natural-gas-push/

Honda Cars : Honda Preparing to Expand U.S. Sales of Natural Gas Civics | 2013 New Honda Car Reviews 0

Nov. 18 (Bloomberg) -- Honda Motor Co., the only automaker currently selling a natural gas-powered car to U.S. consumers, plans to expand sales to most of the 50 states next year, from four now, U.S. Executive Vice President John Mendel said.

“You will see us expand sale of Civic GX across the country,” Mendel told reporters in a briefing at the Los Angeles Auto Show yesterday. “It’ll be a whole new vehicle,” he said, without elaborating.

The Tokyo-based company will make the sales announcement in conjunction with plans to revamp the Civic lineup in 2011, Mendel said.

Honda, which has sold a natural gas Civic for the past decade, promotes the fuel as causing less pollution than gasoline and sourced entirely from domestic sources. Ford Motor Co. and Chrysler Group LLC have also said they’re developing natural gas models.

The current federal incentive for the purchase of a natural gas car is $3,500, Mendel said. While Honda has sold about 2,000 units of the Civic GX a year, it will sell only about 1,200 this year because of the plans to revamp the model, he said.

Honda gained 1.3 percent in Tokyo trading to 3,125 yen as of 1:23 p.m. The stock has increased 0.5 percent in 2010.

Global Warming
Boone Pickens, founder and chairman of Dallas-based BP Capital LLC, said yesterday a bill to help convert the U.S. trucking fleets to natural gas may pass Congress by year-end with bipartisan support.

Pickens wants buses and trucks that run on natural gas to replace the diesel and gasoline engines that contribute to global warming and increase U.S. oil imports that cost the country as much as $1 billion a day.

The measure, which Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid introduced in September, has support from Republicans and Democrats and may be the first major legislation during the Obama administration to win support from both parties, Pickens said.

Mendel declined to provide a sales goal for the revamped natural gas Civic. Honda’s U.S. unit is based in Torrance, California.

Source;
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-11-17/honda-preparing-to-expand-u-s-sales-of-natural-gas-civics.html

Honda Cars : Honda Civic GX the Greenest in USA for Seventh Successive Year | 2013 New Honda Car Reviews 0

The American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE) has released its environmental ratings for model year 2010 vehicles. The “greenest vehicle” title goes once again to Honda’s natural gas-powered Civic GX. With a ‘green score’ of 57 points, the Honda Civic GX continues its dominance over nearest rivals the Toyota Prius on 52 points and the Honda Civic Hybrid on 51 points. The top ten green vehicles ranged from 57 down to 45 points out of a maximum 100.

The outcome is a repeat of last year’s result, and the year before that, in fact way back to 2004, when the Honda Civic GX was first named the ‘greenest vehicle’ sold in the US by the ACEEE, beating all gasoline vehicles, including all the gasoline hybrids. 2010 is the 10th annual “Green Book(R) Online” ranking of environmentally responsible vehicles.

ACEEE vehicle analyst Shruti Vaidyanathan noted, “While clean diesels once again perform well on our annual ranking, high prices both for the vehicles and for diesel fuel have kept them from really catching on thus far. They’re not having the impact in the U.S. that they have had in Europe, and as a result, manufacturers are scaling back production and promotion of diesels.”

ACEEE’s website greenercars.org provides the facts necessary to examine the eco-performance of any 2010 model. Vehicles are analyzed on the basis of a “Green Score,” a singular measure that incorporates unhealthy tailpipe emissions, fuel consumption, and emissions of gases that cause global warming.

The American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy is an independent, nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing energy efficiency as a means of promoting economic prosperity, energy security, and environmental protection.

Source;
http://www.ngvglobal.com/honda-civic-gx-the-greenest-in-usa-for-seventh-successive-year-0121