May
22
Day 4 Update
Yesterday was by far the most “exciting” day of the trip. The video from the below blog post illustrates one of two big challenges we ran into yesterday. As I mentioned earlier, the 18 wheeler accident resulted in us sitting on I-12 for about 3 hours. We couldn’t just turn the car off and sit though – we would sit still for a minute then roll forward 5 feet or so and stop again. We went about 12 miles in 2.5 hours before they finally diverted us off the highway.
The first problem with this was the amount of fuel we wasted idling. We had been counting on a full fill getting us about 350 miles, BR to Milton never seemed like it would be a problem.
Idling, however, can have significant effects on fuel economy. I found this interesting fact today from the California Energy Commission: For every two minutes a car is idling, it uses about the same amount of fuel it takes to go about one mile.
We probably idled for about 150 min, or in other words, we wasted about 75 miles worth of fuel inching along a 15 mile stretch of highway. (This assumes the CEC info can be equally applied to vehicles running on CNG – I am going to assume yes since they get similar fuel economy.)
So the earlier video shows the excitement of simply making it to the Milton station. When we are low the indicator light flashes to tell me we are running on reserves. Yesterday it flashed for the last 40 minutes of the ride, but never began beeping which is when you know you have run out.
The second big problem was that it put us way behind schedule. A lack of infrastructure, or refueling stations, is definitely a problem for CNG vehicles, but it’s also a problem when while there may be one in an area you need, it closes at 4:30pm on a Friday like the Milton station.
Once we actually got over the joy of making it to the station on CNG, we had to deal with the fact that according to chat rooms and late confirmation from an individual with the City of Milton, the station “closed” at 4:30 on Fridays and would not reopen until Monday morning. The sign at the station, however, says, “Open 24 hours” and “Public Welcome”, and my prep calls to the station in the weeks prior never included any info about needing a special access card once the wknd rolled around.
So we went ahead and tried to fill up, thinking we’d be out of luck. We were all praying for a miracle, and when we turned it on the sweet sound of gas rushing into the tank began. That video is even more dramatic than the other. Take a look.
The predicament, however, was that while it worked it never registered my credit card and therefore never charged me. Leading me to believe that this unmanned station “closes” at 4:30 when they turn the credit card reader off.
This whole situation though seems very weird to me. Many regular gas stations and the Clean Energy stations, for example, have 24 hour card readers. This leaves a CNG user passing thru Milton after hours with 2 options: just get stuck and hang out til Monday morning when the City opens back up for business or pump your CNG but have no way to pay for it. We took down exactly what we received, 13.965 gallons of gas equivalent at $1.39/gallon, for a total of $19.42, and I’m going to mail pymt to the City today. Thankfully, it all worked out and we were able to continue on to Birmingham as planned, just way later than expected!
