Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- The Honda Civic Natural Gas took home Green Car Journal's 2012 Green Car of the Year award at the L.A. Auto Show on Thursday.
The Civic was lauded for being the cleanest running internal combustion vehicle as certified by the EPA and the only assembly-line produced natural gas passenger model for sale on the U.S. market.
But I never saw the motivation for electric cars. First, the electricity has to come from somewhere (gee, how about a nice polluting coal-burning power plant?). Only 19% of US energy is nuclear. NG power plants are cleaner than coal, but all I see is that we are just moving the pollution problem from being a distributed one (gas cars everywhere), to a few huge electricity power plants.... Perhaps I am missing something, but it looks like a zero-sum gain.
Well one big gain is from the car companies, as electric cars help their CAFE (Corporate Average Fuel Economy), so they can build more 600HP Mustangs and Corvettes, and not get penalized. So I guess it is not all bad
This car has been around for so long, I'm surprised that it remains the only one if it is, indeed, that clean.
It takes HOURS to refill at home. And NG refill stations are only in select areas, making it fairly impractical.
I was shocked to see proliferation of CNG powered vehicles in India. Virtually every bus (city transport), taxi and auto-rickshaw (tuk-tuk) uses CNG.
Do you know how long it takes to pump CNG into Civic GX using PHIL? (Honda was selling PHIL units with Civic GX a few years ago, and was involved in its development).
it would be great to have more of our vehicles running on a fuel that is produced in this country.
i used to have a 77 chevy truck that was rigged to run on propane or butane, had a 75 gallon tank mounted in the bed behind the cab that took 15-20 minutes to fill. the exhaust pipe on that thing was always clean as a whistle.
But I never saw the motivation for electric cars. First, the electricity has to come from somewhere (gee, how about a nice polluting coal-burning power plant?). Only 19% of US energy is nuclear. NG power plants are cleaner than coal, but all I see is that we are just moving the pollution problem from being a distributed one (gas cars everywhere), to a few huge electricity power plants.... Perhaps I am missing something, but it looks like a zero-sum gain.
Well one big gain is from the car companies, as electric cars help their CAFE (Corporate Average Fuel Economy), so they can build more 600HP Mustangs and Corvettes, and not get penalized. So I guess it is not all bad
I think it's good that we do research in multiple areas. Especially electric. Who knows, maybe someone will invent a solar panel that's 100x more dense than today.
I was shocked to see proliferation of CNG powered vehicles in India. Virtually every bus (city transport), taxi and auto-rickshaw (tuk-tuk) uses CNG.
Do you know how long it takes to pump CNG into Civic GX using PHIL? (Honda was selling PHIL units with Civic GX a few years ago, and was involved in its development).
All of our NJTransit buses are CNG as well. I'm sure it is in other areas of the country as well. These buses have their own fueling stations which make it practical.
PHIL takes an entire night to refill the Civic GX. This is not a problem with Phil, but rather an issue with the fact that residential CNG lines are too low of a pressure to provide a faster rate of filling the tank.
it would be great to have more of our vehicles running on a fuel that is produced in this country.
i used to have a 77 chevy truck that was rigged to run on propane or butane, had a 75 gallon tank mounted in the bed behind the cab that took 15-20 minutes to fill. the exhaust pipe on that thing was always clean as a whistle.
IIRC, there is a real move in progress towards this with tractor trailers. Cummins is building the engines and a company coordinating with T Boone Pickens is contracting with Pilot/Flying J truck stops to install the NG fuel stations.
Then we have to again question what is really "green" with the problems associated with ground water pollution and fracking.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
