It's another chicken and the egg situation. T.Boone Pickens is promoting CNG (compressed natural gas) powered transportation. Honda is currently the only company making a car running on natural gas. Natural gas is cheap, but a car can't carry much because it is not currently possible to store it in a liquid state. It can only be compressed. So to store enough gas to get around yet have some space for people and luggage, the range of the car isn't much over 200 miles before refueling is needed. The nice part is you can buy your own refueling station for your garage and connect it to your gas meter. The bad part is that it takes sixteen hours to refill and empty tank! Oh, it costs about $8,000 too. There are, however, commercial refueling stations that can refill your tank, actually it's recompressing it, and it doesn't take too much longer than putting $75 worth of gasoline into the the old Ford Explorer. The problem is, where are they?
They can be found at www.cngprices.com . You will see that WE Energies has a station over on West Avenue! It's mainly for thier use but they sell to the occasional consumer that wanders in. The biggest surprise is that the last price for it was $1.46 GGE. What's GGE? It's comparing apples and oranges. It stands for GAS GALLON EQUIVELANCY. So yes, you guessed right. Running your car on natural gas would be like paying $1.46 a gallon for gasoline.
Unfortunately, most CNG refueling stations have limited hours and are not in enough locations that a trip to the cabin in Up North Wisconsin can be done. So it is a chicken and the egg situation. Oil companies won't put in CNG pumps until cars line up for it. Nobody wants a CNG car if they can't get gas for it. What's the solution? I propose that the city, all cities for that matter, should step up and provide a refueling station open at reasonable hours and begin using CNG for government vehicles. If there is a market for the CNG fueled Honda, they will make more and I'm sure Wilde Honda will be happy to sell them. Other car makers will get into the act too. Soon Mega Oil will think about putting in a CNG facility at their local station and the ball will be rolling on it's own.
Lets provide the egg and the chickens will soon hatch!
