[dsmtoday]

Yeah, it works very well for busses, which generally fill up in a yard where they can keep a huge tank of CNG or LNG under very high pressures and fill the bus up probably faster than they can fill it with diesel.

With cars, you can do this sort of fill at home, but the problem is the nat gas the comes to your house is under super low pressure. So you have to have this filling system that can really crank the pressure up for you. Honda uses this system called Phill.
http://automobiles.honda.com/civic-gx/refueling.aspx

Takes 16 hours to refill the tank! No advantage over an electric car except for maybe a bit more range (and the fuel and car both are cheaper).

[jas3]

Takes 16 hours to refill the tank! No advantage over an electric car except for maybe a bit more range (and the fuel and car both are cheaper).

Unfortunately, CNG vehicles cost a bunch more than their gasoline powered brethren. When you add in the cost of the Phill unit, the electricity to run it, the rebuild cost (since it only runs for X hours without a complete rebuild), it turns out that you need to drive like 50K miles a year to break even after 3 years.

CNG is $2 a GGE cheaper than auto gas here at nearby stations, but I still can't make CNG work for me b/c of the $7K higher vehicle cost. My breakeven is at 3,500 gallons, and since I don't drive much, that would take a long long time.

jas3