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Page added on March 7, 2012
GM and Chrysler to offer natural gas pickup trucks
Both GM and Chrylser plan to offer compresses natural gas (CNG) pickup trucks to the US market. Chrysler said its CNG-powered Rams can travel 255 miles on the fuel before automatically switching to an eight-gallon gasoline tank for an additional 112 miles. GM’s pickups would go up to 650 miles using both CNG and gasoline.
The biggest hurdle to wider use is refueling. Today there are fewer than 400 public CNG fueling stations in the U.S.
The interest in natural-gas vehicles comes as gasoline prices are on the rise again and support for using domestic natural gas to replace oil is gaining support. After years of promoting electric cars, President Obama signaled a change in the administration when he said during his January State of the Union speech the nation needs to explore all alternative energy sources.
“We have a supply of natural gas that can last America nearly 100 years,” Mr. Obama said in his speech. “My administration will take every possible action to safely develop this energy. Experts believe this will support more than 600,000 jobs by the end of the decade.”
7 Comments on "GM and Chrysler to offer natural gas pickup trucks"
BillT on Wed, 7th Mar 2012 1:55 am
Anything to try to sell more of their junk. “100” years at todays use, maybe. But if a percentage of cars switch, and power plants switch, and home heating switch…that 100 years could be gone in less than 20. Maybe much less as a lot of that 100 years is hype and guess.
Gale Whitaker on Wed, 7th Mar 2012 2:59 am
Don’t worry, the republicans will never allow the government to subsidize building the infrastructure to distribute natural gas to service stations.
Kenz300 on Wed, 7th Mar 2012 3:15 am
Long haul truckers are buying LNG fueled trucks. Honda makes a CNG car. GM and Chrysler will offer CNG trucks. If is time to end the oil monopoly on transportation fuels. A monopoly is only good for the monopoly and means higher prices for the consumer. It is good to see an alternative to oil. Bring on the electric, flex-fuel, hybrid, CNG, LNG and hydrogen fueled vehicles. Consumers need a choice and oil needs competition.
BillT on Wed, 7th Mar 2012 3:20 am
Kenz, there is no ‘alternate’ to fossil fuels. None. You are drinking the investor Koolaid if you believe other wise. We are on the path to collapse. The only question is whether the economy will go before oil runs out or after. Either way, your way of life is over. M<y best guess is that finance will collapse taking down the supply streams and we will be forced to change.
DC on Wed, 7th Mar 2012 4:19 am
KenZ, there is a reason why we call the oil-cartels a ‘monopoly, or a de-facto one if you prefer. They dont just control oil, they controll ALL fossil-fuels, Propane, Nat-gas, man, they control it all. Get it? The only reason they tolerate the few Propane and Nat-gas vehicles that exist now, is because the raised the cost on a per-gallon\litre equivalient to near-gasoline levels. They did that with diesel too, restricting the number of passenger disels to almost nil, and raise the cost of diesel to gas-o-line levels. Dont you get it yet? They dont want to sell propane, Nat-gas, even diesel to anyone. They want to sell gas-end of story. And since they control all the liquid fuels you STILL insist on referring to as ‘alternates’ for some strange reason, they arent.
What again would be so appealing about replacing the oil monopoly with a Nat-gas monoloply, all owned and controlled by the same people and companies? even if such a thing were in offing? Propane used to be very econonical as a vehicle fuel in Canada still is started to catch on. What happened was within a very short period of time, the price of auto-propane was raised till it no longer made economic sense for anyone to convert. End result, many converions were ripped out and written off. Many (fomerly) Propane-powered vehicles reverted to gas-burners. Which was goal all along.
And I think you realize 250k Fool-cell vehicles arent happening either. Flex-fool and hybrids are NOT alternates-preiod. No matter how times you repeat that,it wont make it true, sorry.
John Wilkins on Wed, 7th Mar 2012 4:33 pm
In 1969, I converted my 1968 Pontiac GTO to run on propane. It was quite easy to do with carburation. I have not looked into how to do it with fuel injectors, but I don’t think it would be hard. I put a 40 gallon propane tank in my trunk and had a solenoid valve in both the gasoline line and the propane line. I had a Bowden wire that ran through the firewall so i could adjust the special air cleaner air flow. I also had a switch to shut off or open the solenoids. I could change from one fuel to the other without stopping. The only problem is the propane (or natural gas) runs cleaner so you have to keep the valves adjusted. I fueled the propane tank from our families 500 gallon propane tank in our yard. Much better to use natural gas for vehicles in the United States as opposed to exporting it.
Harquebus on Thu, 8th Mar 2012 3:55 am
A tank will hold more LPG than CNG because of their different molecular structures, about six times more.