Filed under: Honda, Natural Gas, Green Daily, USAWe’re suckers for a good conspiracy theory, and we’ve stumbled upon one involving getting our nations off imported oil. Perfect! After reading through it, though, we’re a little less enthusiastic. The whole thing centers around the Honda Civic GX, which is powered by natural gas as opposed to […]
Filed under: Honda, Natural Gas
Since Honda started offering a natural gas-powered version of the Civic (the GX) several years ago they have also offered buyers a device called the Phill. Phill is a home natural gas compressor that hooks up to the household gas supply and fuels the car. The device is built by a Honda-owned company called FuelMaker Corp in Toronto. Honda has now sold FuelMaker to Clean Energy Fuels Corp. for $17 million. Clean Energy already sells compressed and liquefied natural gas for transportation fleets in North America and wants to use the Phill technology to expand the market for natural gas vehicles in North America and worldwide. In particular, the company sees an international market for the Phill in places like Europe and India where natural gas is more popular as a vehicle fuel.
Gallery: 2007 Honda Civic GX
[Source: Automotive News - sub. req’d]
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By Larry Burns
GM Vice President, Research & Development
Volatile oil prices have been dominating the news lately, underscoring growing unease about the automobile’s heavy dependence on petroleum. As these concerns reverberate from Main Street to Wall Street, General Motors is working toward new solutions that will answer the growing demand for personal transportation in an affordable […]
Now, the car makers are looking forward to make a green statement with their hybrid models. Honda, which earlier delivered gas-only and gas-electric version of its Civic, is now offering a Civic that moves on compressed natural gas. Well, natural gas in…
Filed under: Emerging Technologies, Ethanol, Natural Gas
The merits of ethanol can be debated all day, with opposing viewpoints ranging from “at least it’s better than dino-juice” to “it’s barely better than hydrogen” to “it’s our only viable option”. While the truth probably lies somewhere in between the extremes, most agree that corn is not the best source for a starting biomass. But, if corn is not good enough for ethanol, how about we save the corncobs for “sponges” that can store 180 times their own volume of natural gas or methane gas and at one seventh the pressure of conventional natural gas tanks?
One exciting prospect of this technology is that the tanks made from corncobs bricks could be shaped into a flat “gas tank” style, eliminating the bulky storage tanks currently in use for natural gas storage. The current testbed is a pickup used by the Kansas City Office of Environmental Quality. This holds hope for a biomethane powered automobile. Will we ever be running our cars on cow manure?
[Source: The Sietch Blog via Hugg]
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BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD Step behind the curtain at Ford Motor. Experience the documentary first-hand.
Filed under: Natural Gas
Long Beach and Los Angeles provide the primary points of entry for all the cheap Chinese products Wal-Mart (and just about every other retailer in America) shoppers can’t seem to do without. They are the largest container ports in America and there are huge fleets of trucks to move all the containers in and out of the ports. Traditionally, they were transported by thousands of diesel trucks, with an estimated 22,000 trips a day moving containers between the ports and warehouses for distribution around the country.
The two ports are now teaming up to request quotes for a liquefied natural gas truck program. Natural gas-powered trucks would have eighty to ninety percent less particulate and NOx emissions than the current diesel trucks. The two ports and the South Coast Air Quality Management board have committed $22 million dollars to assist operators with replacing trucks from before 1989 with new LNG powered trucks. This is particularly important since container traffic through the two ports is expected to double by 2020, meaning even more truck traffic through the gates.
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[Source: GreenCarCongress]
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BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD Step behind the curtain at Ford Motor. Experience the documentary first-hand.