May
3

Fuel Prices: Part II

7 Comments

As a follow up to my earlier post on the cost savings of CNG over gasoline, I thought I’d share my estimates for the upcoming trip.

The converted Chevy Tahoe I am taking on the trip has a 22.5 gallon of gas equivalent (gge) capacity, the standard on a gasoline-powered Tahoe is a 26 gallon tank, so its smaller but not too far off. The fuel economy is about the same with either fuel getting 15 city, 21 highway. For my estimates, I am using 18 mpg as an average. I think that’s actually conservative since most of the driving will be highway.

A note about capacity: the standard conversion for a Tahoe would usually be two 4.5 gge capacity tanks attached to the undercarriage. This would have given the Tahoe a range of only 9 x 18= 162 miles which wouldn’t have gotten me very far. Apache added 3 additional CNG tanks (4.5 gge capacity each) to the rear of the vehicle and removed the 3rd seat, greatly extending the vehicles range.

So with those details: The modified Tahoe’s range on a full tank = 22.5 x 18 = 396 miles per full fill

And using the national average prices from DOE. (The most recent data for average CNG prices is for Jan 2010 so I used that for both fuels)

Estimated Costs per Gallon:
Gasoline = $2.65/gallon
CNG = $1.85/gge

Estimated Miles Travelled:
Direct route from Austin to Boston = 1,998 miles (according to Google Maps)
My route with added diversions to get to the CNG stations = 2,344 miles (Note: this is just fueling station to fueling station – the actual final mileage will be more because of some of the additional stops we will be making along the way)

So my estimated cost comparison calculation looks like this:
- On gasoline = 1,998 mi / 18 mpg x $2.65= $294.15
- On CNG = 2,344 mi / 18 mpg x $1.85 = $240.91

So even though I have to go 346 miles out of the way, I still save $53.24 on fuel! I will be keeping detailed accounts of this on the trip and will share the actuals with you all as we go.>/p>

  • Share/Bookmark

Posted in Uncategorized
7 Comments Posted by Castlen

7 Responses to "Fuel Prices: Part II"

  • Robert Hughes says:
    May 18, 2010 at 2:00 pm

    How do you locate CNG stations along the road?

    Are these stations accessible by the public, or are they private City or Utility owned facilities?

    Thanks and safe travels,

    REHughes

  • Gerard says:
    May 18, 2010 at 10:00 pm

    Does the $185/gge include road taxes that are in-bedded in the $265/ gal of gasoline?

  • robert orlick says:
    May 18, 2010 at 11:21 pm

    I have a Honda GX. CNG only. The disadvantage of the vehicle is that cng stations are few and far between here in AZ. In my case I have to drive 30 miles round trip from home to fill it up. The car is a 2000 yr model and has only 27,000 miles on it. As you can surmise it is a in-town car. I would not buy another unless fuel was more readily available.

    h

  • Bob Foote says:
    May 18, 2010 at 11:30 pm

    I own stock in a gas drilling company, so I’m happy to use it. I’m curious about the cost of re-fitting my cars to use NG. Do you have expense figures of the re-fit for a variety of cars?

  • Leo Wells says:
    May 19, 2010 at 2:37 am

    In responce to Bob Foote’s queation, the cost to convert from gasoline to compressed natural gas is in the $500.00 range, + or – Who Knows???. The $500.00 number came from a shop in Tulsa Oklahoma, specializing in conversions to CNG.

  • Peter Hutt says:
    May 19, 2010 at 4:31 am

    Good luck. You must have a huge tank in that tahoe. What psi is the range based on. Like an earlier poster I had a GX with 100 mile range. Liked the way the engine stayed so clean even with a lot of miles. Sold the car after a couple of years for close to what I paid for it. I think one of the keys that you should look at is the cost of ng in each area of the county. Ng makes a lot of sense if you don’t have to pipe it too far. In the nw where I live we have hydro so I think this area would be better for electric cars

  • David Link says:
    May 19, 2010 at 6:35 am

    We have owned our Honda Civic GX since December 1998. We have 90,000 clean miles on it and have been very satisfied. We had a 17 mile round trip from home to refuel, which was definitely less than ideal, so we went searching for a used FuelMaker Phill. We found one at a Honda dealership. They had replaced their old Phill with a new one to better advertise the GX. Purchasing Phill used, with only 700 hours on the compressor, saved us more than $2,500 over a new FuelMaker.

    We are VERY happy with home refueling and wish that Honda had kept up its side of the bargain when they offered to pay a substantial portion of the cost of a new FuelMaker for purchasers of new Civic GX cars. That promise never came through. We were expected to pay $4,800 for an new FMQ-2-36… way too much, so we waited for Phill, which was supposed to cost in the neighborhood of $1,000. Then the Canadian dollar moved close to parity with the US dollar, causing the price to jump, however the final cost in the middle $3,000 range could not be fully attributed to the drop in the US dollar.

    With only one company offering home refueling compressors in the US, there is no competition. A Dutch company, offering a higher quality compressor for less money, never made it to the US. Other alternatives are still distant mirages. When there is little effort to expand the refueling infrastructure, and Honda fails to adequately advertise the cleanest and greenest non-EV available on the road in the US for the past 7 years, what should we expect? This is a great car, but so is the Mitsubishi turbocharged CNG which is a rally winner (not available in the US), and so are Opel CNG vehicles (part of GM never brought to the US), and Fiat CNG vehicles (never brought to the US), and Volvo bi-fuel and multi-fuel CNG/petrol vehicles (never brought to the US and killed by Ford), and Ford Focus & Fusion conversions offer excellent range (but are only planned to be converted in low numbers and not by Ford), and Volkswagen CNG vehicles, including turbocharged CNG (never brought to the US), and the list goes on. CNG vehicles are much cleaner than gasoline, they produce drastically lower particulate pollution, CNG is non-toxic, CNG may be produced from waste and become carbon neutral….. YES, we are frustrated that this technology is relegated to back of the room, while other technologies which will likely not see widespread acceptance or reasonable costs for decades (Hydrogen Fuel Cells) are promoted as final answers to automotive pollution.

    Battery Electric Vehicles are now able to offer exactly what we have used our CNG car for these past 12 years, but they are still off in the near future (we can’t afford a Tesla)…. yes, we are on the waiting list for the Leaf, but it offers much less range than our GX has given us, even with poor low pressure fills. We regularly found real world ranges of 160 to 180 miles with around town driving, while highway driving (at the speed limit) earned us 220 to 290 mile range. With true 3600 psi refills from our Phill at home (so convenient), we are regularly over 200 miles around town and closer to 300 mile range regularly on the highway.

    As to converting from gasoline to CNG, the additional cost for the Civic GX over the equivalent gasoline Civic LX of 1998 was closer to $3,000 than the $500 quoted above, though after market conversions would most likely be cheaper than OEM (better? I’m not so sure).

    You may disagree with the suitability of CNG for vehicles in your part of the country, though it has always been an excellent prospect for us in California.

Leave a Comment