I take it you have a place where you purchase CNG?

Do you have NG to the house - have you looked at a home fueling station? One of our neighbors have a setup - I guess it takes an overnight plug in to fully refuel, but I imagine the cost is a little lower after you get the station paid for.

 

home stations are not that good as it takes too long. here is a map of cng stations nationwide. It is dated as there are quite a few not listed:

http://www.afdc.energy.gov/afdc/fuel...locations.html

and another that is pretty comprehensive:

http://find.mapmuse.com/interest/cng

I have one a few blocks from my house it takes no longer to fill the cng than it does gas. there are a couple more steps but they only take seconds. all in all it is readily available and easy to access!

 

How about that - according to one of the links there is a station a couple of miles from me!

Re: the home unit - yes, my understanding is that it basically takes over night to fill as the unit has to compress the gas into the tanks.


As far as the fault codes you are throwing - it sounds like they have nothing to do with the hybrid system. If that's true, it would seem to be something the installer is going to be able to resolve?

 

one code indirectly does, the low fuel pressure code, we are experimenting with solutions to this. It occurs as the fuel return is 0 when the cng is engaged. The other is more problematic as the post cat sensor is thinking that the car is WAY TO CLEAN so there must be something wrong. Both have been refered to as nuisance codes. otherwise so far it is working flawlessly I hope to have some prelim fuel usage figures soon but I am still running on my first full cng and gas fill up (450 miles so far) I am not going to fill it until both sources are low to empty.

 

Over 450 miles on the tanks in the pictures? WoW! So liquid plus CNG a possible range near 1000 miles? A dollars per 100 miles on each fuel would be real interesting.

Michigan recently approved an electricity price hike. It figures since coal more than doubled about 5 years ago and the utilities were absorbing that cost since.

So now a 40 mile Volt charge went to about $1.50 from $1.20. So Volt commuting here without discount meter system is $3.75 per 100 miles on electricity. Gasoline only at 33 mpg and $3.40/gallon $10.20. My 2 Mode commute to work (82 mile round trip) at ~21mpg $16.90 per 100 miles.

I would need about 1.33 gallons of propane to go as far as one gallon of gasoline. A 20 mpg gasoline 2 Mode should drop to about 15 on propane. So at $2.90/ gallon and 15 mpg the dollars per 100 miles = $19.33. About the same for E-85.

Jet1... you may have a winner here!

 

Yes - it sounds very promising.

The little research that I've done indicates there is a bill in committee that might pay a significant portion of the conversion costs (50%?). I'm going to try to find more about that and follow it to see where it goes.

There are about a dozen places in California that I've come across that say they do CNG conversions - but most seem to be geared towards large or fleet vehicles. No site has any real pricing information or suggestion that they have experience with consumer vehicles.

I'd be tempted to go to Jet1's place - they have a location in Utah - but would be more comfortable with someone who has worked on California cars before and is able to provide what ever documentation CARB may need.

With prices here likely to hit $5 this summer, the economics are quickly moving in favor of this. At a usage rate of 600 gallons/yr and a savings of 75% on fuel price - that makes a savings of 450 * $5 or $2250 if those prices hold - so a 2-3 year payback. If the proposed bill becomes law - that could make it a year payback - which is definitely the turning point on the decision.

 

Yes, I was going to say the same thing.


In six months when I finished my calculatiunz.

 

yes i estimate a range of 800 to 1000 miles in town, that is combined with the fossil fuel I have 3/4 of a tank of std gas on board right now and approx. 1200 lbs of cng left on this fill, 100% in town driving only. I estimate that highway would be much better than that, ALSO please remember that this is COMPRESSED NATURAL GAS not propane, pretty big difference, especially related to cost..

http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-the-...atural-gas.htm

 

presdent osammas big agenda is to switch to natural gas so there may be quite a few things like that available. Utah is giving a tax rebate % for conversions so I can probably get about $2500.00 in tax credits towards my tax indebtedness, needless to say I will be applying for this which will lower the conversion cost to approx $4000.00 I was calculating costs based on the original conversion cost so if this comes about I will be VERY HAPPY with the savings.
Anyone traveling through Utah give me a buzz and I will let you try it out first hand! I am quite pleased with it so far and it is a great solution to our reliance on offshore fuels, not to mention the 90% cleaner environmental impact.
on another note DASH COMMAND is a really comprehensive OBD option, if you have an Ipod it is the BOMB!

 

just ran out of the first fill of CNG 489 miles and I still have 1/2 tank of dino fuel left so I thought I would fill both systems tomorrow and then do the initial math. Its kind of hard with the hybrid to calculate actual mileage in town as the engine stop/start feature relies on dino for the first 20 seconds and it doesn't run well on CNG until the engine reaches operating temp. I am going to play with some settings next week to fine tune it further.