Is Natural Gas the Fuel of the Future?

When The Santa Fe New Mexican took a closer look at natural-gas-fueled vehicles, it probably didn’t realize how much owners such as Barry Bitzer would talk up vehicles such as the Honda GX, which runs on compressed natural gas.

Albuquerque’s Barry Bitzer likes the fact that his newly acquired Honda GX needs no gasoline and spits out almost zero emissions from the tailpipe.

Cheaper fuel and lower emissions aren’t the only things that are enticing buyers. There’s another aspect to his Honda that Bitzer likes, and that’s that it runs on homegrown natural gas.

“Unlike hybrids, which still run on fuel shipped all the way from the Persian Gulf, CNG is totally ‘local,’ ” Bitzer said.

But there’s a catch. Other states, such as Utah and Oklahoma, have a good number of CNG stations, but in the entire state of New Mexico, there are only seven CNG fueling stations.  Building more of them is a pillar of the Pickens Plan.

Plans are in the works to increase the use of compressed-natural-gas vehicles. Congress is considering legislation proposed by oilman T. Boone Pickens to convert all commercial trucks to natural gas. And, according to the Bloomberg news website, Honda announced plans at the Los Angeles Auto Show to expand sales of the Civic GX to all 50 states.

Read the article HERE.