Nat Gas vs. Electric Vehicles: Which Will Drive U.S. Passenger Car Market?

Rig Zone ^ | April 09, 2012 | Karen Boman|

[UCANSEE2]

Natural gas is an interesting option, but of course what happens if a car rolls over in an accident is the big worry.

Well... you've seen gasoline spill out of a car tank, and your mower refill gas can.

Have you seen LNG/NG 'spilling' out of a pressurized tank? Even if you roll it down a long hill?

Doesn't gasoline have a higher energy density than LNG/NG ?

Is a car gasoline tank more susceptible to explosion when it is full, or when almost empty?

[Okieshooter]

How about GTL as an alternative. I have been doing some research on this and found that besides diesel it can be converted to gasoline. The question is at what cost. At least the BTU cost of natural gas to oil is currently about 10 %. The process is old technolgy, but some are working on improving it.

http://www.chevron.com/deliveringenergy/gastoliquids/

[Triple]

You also don’t need to be a rocket scientist to know that the energy stored in a flimsy 30 gallon gas tank is enough to drive a 3,000 pound vehicle made of steel for several hundred miles at speeds of over 100 km per hour.

Life is scary...

(My point is lets cool it on the sensationalism. Let’s trust that the excellent engineers at Westport Innovations, Honda and Ford build the excellent products they are capable of building.)

[thackney]

Shell has a couple of facilities doing this, in Qatar and Malaysia on large scale commercial operations. It just is not economic (yet) in the US.

http://www.shell.com/home/content/aboutshell/our_strategy/major_projects_2/pearl/overview/

[Fee]

I don’t think there is enough lithium mines to produce enough lithium metal for the rechargeable batteries. Minor oversight in high tech concepts, it is called industrial revolution logistics.

[Okieshooter]

Also this company is working on doing GTL on a small scale to move stranded gas for fields that have no pipeline access.

http://www.synfuels.com/

[Buckeye McFrog]

None of the Above because 100 million people will dispatch Obama to an early retirement before they’ll be forced to trade in their cars.

[nuke rocketeer]

Back in the 60's and 70's many farmers in West Texas converted their pickups to run on propane. The propane tank was bolted to the bed right behind the cab. Power was about the same, but mileage was worse with propane that with gasoline. Also, because the engines were designed to run on gasoline, you had to run some gasoline just to keep the seals from going bad.

There were a lot of wrecks, but I do not recall any where the open exposed propane tank exploded.

[meatloaf]

What do you propose to do about the folks with free natural gas that buy a surplus compressor such as a dive shop unit and convert their own vehicles. A farmer up the road did just that.

[marron]

Drawbacks to CNG vehicles include the availability of fueling stations. The natural gas filling stations that are available in the U.S. tend to be concentrated in areas where commercial fleets of CNG vehicles exist; buses and trucks are the biggest market for CNG today.

That tells me that the natural market for natgas vehicles is commercial fleets in urban areas.

[meatloaf]

Propane powered vehicles have been around for years especially for fleets. How often have you heard of one of them blowing up? As long as you don’t break one of the valves on your oxy tanks, they’re safe.

[The Antiyuppie]

If the engine is designed, built and tuned from the ground up for natural gas, they can be pretty good. Everything I’ve seen is a converted gasoline engine.

[thackney]

That is where the market has seen the most growth.

But those will eventually create a bigger fuel delivery market for the rest of us.

[Squawk 8888]

The propane pumps for automotive refuelling are different from the portable tank fillers. AFAIK the taxes are the same for either use, but if not I’m sure there’s an audit trail built into the pumps.

[Jack of all Trades]

True but the volumetric energy storage density of CNG is about 4 times that of a lithium battery, and 9 times that of NiMH. As I commented to Thackney, electron wells are in short supply.

You can charge a CNG cylinder, store it for a year and it will still have the same charge. You can vent it completely, store it virtually forever, and it will still be just as usable. Low operating temperatures will not degrade range with CNG anywhere near near as badly as it will using batteries.

[Squawk 8888]

Natual gas is also lighter than air so any leaks will dissipate rapidly.

[X-spurt]

I can remember years back with a number of propane fueled pickups and cars were out and about. Never once heard of any spectacular crashes.

CNG tanks are costly because they are designed crash proof and although may vent its unlikely to explode.

[Squawk 8888]

Precisely. The biggest market for propane here is taxis.

[JimRed]

Until battery technology catches up with the need for a reasonable range, hybrids will be a good bet. They can be feuled by hydrogen, NG or gasoline.

When power plants go to all nuke and the battery charge is extended to the +/- 300 mile range, then the straight electrics will be best environmentally.

Yes, I believe in environmental responsibility. No, I don’t believe that government should mandate it. Clean coal technology will be good enough to hold us over to the real nuke age.

[JimRed]

The only way electric vehicles will make economic sense is if we relocate the entire U.S. population to large cities serviced by combined heat and power generating plants. The catch 22 is that if everyone lives in giant cities, who would need cars?

That Catch 22 is U.N. Agenda 21. Force us* all into cities where we can be more easily controlled.

*The "elite" would have their country daschas, of course.