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Page added on October 19, 2013
New Chevy Will Run On Natural Gas And Gasoline
General Motors says the 2015 Chevy Impala will have a “bi-fuel” version that runs on both natural gas and gasoline.
Natural gas has long been seen as a solid alternative fuel. But it’s not nearly as available as gasoline.
“It’s very, very affordable, less than two dollars a gallon,” says Kelly Blue Book analyst Alec Gutierrez. “It get’s you HOV access in states like California. But, the big, big hurdle is the infrastructure isn’t quite available yet.”
Honda has a Civic available that runs on natural gas only. In most cases, consumers are available to fuel up at home. But, finding natural gas on the road is a different issue.
Chevy says the bi-fuel Impala would switch seamlessly between natural gas and gasoline. That’s something that Gutierrez says is important for consumer acceptance of the technology.
“If you happen to be in a location where there isn’t a natural gas pump isn’t handy, you could aways revert back to standard gasoline until you’re able to find a CNG pump”
Cost could be an issue. General Motor is not saying what the sticker price will be when the bi-fuel Impala comes out next year.
GM is also expected to announce other details about the vehicle closer to its launch, including options for refueling with natural gas.
There have been aftermarket systems that allow consumers to convert vehicles to operate on both natural gas and gasoline. Those systems have been particularly popular with pickup truck owners. But they also could potentially impact a customer’s warranty.
The Impala is the first vehicle to offer a manufacturer produced bi-fuel system.
The announcement came in Washington, as GM CEO Dan Akerson spoke to a meeting looking at the 40th anniversary of the OPEC Oil Embargo. The GM CEO noting that his company, and other automakers, are looking at various technologies as alternatives to gasoline.
“We know that U.S. energy security won’t come from a one-off moonshot,” Akerson said. “It will flow from our systematic investment in technology and innovation… our drive to get more from existing energy sources and renewables… our commitment to conservation… and it will be assured by fully and safely exploiting our shale gas reserves.”
18 Comments on "New Chevy Will Run On Natural Gas And Gasoline"
TIKIMAN on Sat, 19th Oct 2013 1:56 pm
Good thing we had NG filling station on every corner.
rockman on Sat, 19th Oct 2013 2:26 pm
“If you happen to be in a location where there isn’t a natural gas pump isn’t handy”. Happen to be? LOL. I live in one of the largest US cities that is also the oil/NG hub of the country and we have (if it’s still there) just one retail CNG station in the city. IMHO such developments of NG fueled personal vehicles is 100% PR. But there is obviously a huge potential for utilization by commercial and mass transit operations which can operate their own fueling system. I checked out the home charging systems which could be used to fuel an individual’s vehicle but the price did a good job of wiping out most of the cost advantage.
I see the biggest road block to the expansion of the retail distribution system is the obvious negative feedback: expand based on low NG prices, increase NG consumption, increase the cost of NG, decline of NG motor fuel used and then the loss of revenue needed to pay off the infrastructure expansion. An obvious relationship that would be readily understood by the investors who would have to spend a huge amount of capex.
bobinget on Sat, 19th Oct 2013 2:30 pm
Tikiman thinks he is being hilariously sarcastic but as usual he speaks the truth.
Unlike gasoline (or diesel) NG really is on almost every corner in urban North America.
Do you live in a city with the option of natural gas piped into your home? I’ll bet the chances of you having gasoline or diesel metered into your building,
(factory, office, business, presidential) are slim to none).
Natural gas does not need to be refined, stored, then trucked to a central distribution ‘station’.
I hope you like Tikiman heats his dwelling, cooks, heats water, with gas. Only SolarEnergy is more commonly available.
Dave Thompson on Sat, 19th Oct 2013 2:43 pm
The idea of NG being the next “thing” sounds good. The reality is a little hard to maintain. Long term NG abundance is the problem. Short term Ok. No way will we ever run our fleet of passenger cars and trucks for the foreseeable future.
bobinget on Sat, 19th Oct 2013 2:44 pm
Rockman, respectfully, I read your material with great interest, always learning something new.
Perhaps you recall how only a few years ago how difficult it was to obtain #2 diesel inside large cities?
Have you noticed how with almost no fanfare how
refueling ,formally called ‘service stations’, have added
diesel pumps?
In fact, propane is widely available because demand is already in place. When Mercedes made the only diesel auto, we farmers with our Dodge, Ford or GM pick ups
had to look high and low for diesel when traveling.
As you know, that is no longer the case.
Arthur on Sat, 19th Oct 2013 2:52 pm
My driving career started with a very old 1000 guilder (500$) 400k km Volvo 240, also well known in North-America, considering the regular appearance in US movies:
http://www.imcdb.org/vehicles_make-Volvo_model-240.html
It operated in a bi-fuel mode as well, gasoline and LPG; the latter is not exactly NG, but at least it is compressed gas as well and is very cheap, because it is a by-product from refineries, we have in excess in Europoort. Almost every gasstation in Holland has LPG, but not in the rest of Europe. In the Netherlands these cars are forbidden in parking garages and for good reason. I had to use the bi-fuel mode to start in the gasoline mode and than switch to LPG during driving, when the engine was warm. I had the car parked on a desolate parking lot of a client in the middle of the Rotterdam harbor. After a bad day at the office I had left the building at 20:00 pm. Apparently I had forgotten in the morning to switch from gas to gasoline. There must have been a gas leak, because when I switched on the engine, an explosion followed which left the car fully burned out, reducing it to scrap value. I never left a car faster than on that moment.
No gas for me, LPG or NG, ever, after that experience.
bobinget on Sat, 19th Oct 2013 2:53 pm
Dave is concerned, rightly so, that this NG ‘boomlet’
will not last. My concern is more political. If North America follows the same BAU pattern as resource rich
population poor, often strife ridden nations like Nigeria, exporting the public wealth enriching relatively few, then Dave will be proven right for the wrong reasons. If OTOH, we use NG like a gift, understanding it, like every other natural resource except sunlight is finite, the human race has a better then even chance of survival.
bobinget on Sat, 19th Oct 2013 3:05 pm
Arthur, there were over 32, 000 auto fires in the US
in 2012. I learned this on the event of a $60,000 electric car fire that sent Tesla shares into a deep dive.
The unpleasant fact is EVERY energy generation mode has serious side effects. Do you believe highly explosive gasoline would be approved by any government agency if it were introduced today as an alternative fuel?
Ever watch an inboard gasoline powered small boat fire
Ghung on Sat, 19th Oct 2013 3:07 pm
Perhaps we’ll see a Chevy Volt next, a battery/tri-fuel electric drive: Battery/electric, gasoline, CNG, and LPG. At least CNG and LPG last longer in the tank. A friend took his Volt in for service and the dealer told him to run at least a tank full of gasoline through it every couple of months. Seems the fuel was getting ‘stale’ in the system since he was doing virtually all of his driving on the battery. He loves his volt, though. Grid power is cheap here (TVA country) and charging his car has actually driven his average per kWh price down. Too bad a lot of that comes from coal.
Bob Kraus on Sat, 19th Oct 2013 5:59 pm
There was a very interesting seminar on CSpan last night. It was from something called the Energy Security Council. It was all about Methanol, which according to many participants is THE energy source of the future!It is, according to these people, easily and inexpensivley made from natural gas, has terrific high octane (it’s being used in NASCAR today) and is very clean and green. So what’s not to like? Anyway, the venerable John Hoffmeister was on the panel and came very close, unless my ears were misshearing, to saying he was now a Peak Oil-ist. He said that because of declining production in current wells and the increasing difficulty in finding and drilling for new oil, and because of surging demand in Asia that within two years there would be a game-changing imbalance in worldwide supply and demand of oil. Leading to huge price increases. Attention must be paid to such a man.
DMyers on Sat, 19th Oct 2013 6:03 pm
Re: bobinget v. Arthur
bobinget makes some interesting points about the EV fire and high explosive potency of gasoline. For that matter Arthur could suffer from a BIC lighter explosion in the face, while smoking in one of those famous Amsterdam coffee houses.
From Arthur’s experience, I draw the conclusion that mixing and matching fuels, with extra tanks, switches, conduits, and refueling portals, probably does, indeed, increase the odds of an explosive malfunction.
Re: Ghung
TVA? I’m thinking Knoxville to Nashville, an area in which I have spent some time. You don’t know Ghung, how cheap the TVA juice was at one time. I’m talking pre 1973, when all energy prices rose in unison with oil and inflation.
There is some relation here between NG and TVA electricity. Our dominant forms of energy are to some extent interchangeable. For that reason, when one source price goes up, the price of other sources also go up. Therefore, NG is not only likely to rise on its own increasing scarcity, but it will also rise on the scarcity of other sources, such as oil and coal.
NG should not be an alternative, if the basis for making it so is either better price or greater available quantity. Neither will be a lasting quality of NG.
DC on Sat, 19th Oct 2013 6:21 pm
Isnt it wonderful when taxpayer-funded corporate welfare giants like GM get to continue to ‘dictate’ transportation policy to the rest of us. In a sane world, GM would get never have gotten one dime in welfare, much less that $50billion dollar bailout. Nor would they be allowed to decide the future is all about the private fossil-fueled gas-burner. Societies need to develop broad consensus about how they will live and get around-not corrupt corporate welfare cases like GM and there ilk. I know we dont live in that world, but once again, GM is dictating the way we live with ‘innovations’ like the rolling piece of garbage pictured above.
The simple fact is, NG will never power replace gas. Simply because it cant. Production of ‘wet’ NG has already peaked in N.A. What do they propose to fuel N.A.s 200million+ gas burners, frack NG?
Good luck with that.People are already strongly opposed to frack operations. It has taken us about a century to set fire to all the easy to get at conventional oil supplies, and now they are starting on the dregs, shale, tar-sands, whatnot. Any large scale attempt to replace gas with NG will fizzle out in far less than a century. Maybe a decade or 2 at most before NG became seriously depleted and or prohibitively expensive.Not only that, most of N.A.s remaining wilderness, farmland, groundwater, national parks, and probaly your backyards, will have been converted to frak-gas pads to do it. Thats a future I am sure everyone wants. And if we do go that route, rest assured in 2 or 3 decades time there will be PLENTY of people wringing there hands and looking slack-jawed at all the destruction both the cars AND the fraking itself has done and what they say to each other?
“We didnt know”…..
At which point, the search would begin for yet another ‘replacement’ (fossil-fuel)for their beloved private trash-cans.
GregT on Sat, 19th Oct 2013 9:15 pm
We have been told that we must stop using ALL fossil fuels by 2030, to give us a 50/50 chance of averting catastrophic runaway climate change.
The effects of us burning fossil fuels are accumulative, and will continue to plague the Earth for hundreds of years.
The last time I checked, natural gas was still a fossil fuel.
We need to stop manufacturing automobiles, completely.
Arthur on Sun, 20th Oct 2013 9:52 am
It looks like Shell is more than willing to provide all the NG necessary for your average driver to drive to the moon and back:
http://deepresource.wordpress.com/2013/10/20/shell-to-build-largest-flng-tanker-ever-488m/
I don’t think Shell is so stupid to build these giants if they aren’t reasonably certain that they can be written off with profit. Prepare for the ‘Golden Age of Gas’ 🙁
Others on Sun, 20th Oct 2013 4:15 pm
GM will price this car at least $ 7K – 8K above gas version just like they priced Bifuel Silverado/Sierra $11K above gas version.
In Brazil, a Trifuel car (which can run on Gas, CNG , Ethanol) costs only $1K above the gas version.
Only Cabbies can buy this. Even for them CNG Transit with a big trunk is better option.
Automakers are not interested in selling alternative fuel vehicles, so they price the products so high.
Better to go to after market dealer who can do the conversion for much lower price.
mike on Sun, 20th Oct 2013 6:51 pm
Solar powered cars are the best. Look at how awesome those bad boys are and how fast they go. Solar will fix all this. Solar all the way!
Ghung on Sun, 20th Oct 2013 8:02 pm
@ DMeyer: We’re in western NC amongst the top tier TVA lakes (Hiwassee and Little Tenn. rivers watersheds. Here’s the new monthly rate schedule, as of this month, published by our areas cooperative:
GSA 1 – Under 50 KW Customer charge-$19.73
Demand Less Than 50 KW – No charge.
First 15,000 KWH @ 11.895 cents (If KWH usage goes over 15,000, then goes to GSA 2)
GSA 2 – Over 50 KW
Customer Charge- $75.00
First 15,000 KWH @ 11.811 cents
Additional KWH @ 5.936 cents
@ mike: One of our neighbours is charging his Leaf (and his home) with solar (near 100%). He does think solar powered cars are the best. He’s recently put a PV charging station at his business in town as well. It’s telling that this simple little man can do what the “greatest nation on earth” either refuses to do, or can’t do collectively.
Arthur on Sun, 20th Oct 2013 8:58 pm
“Solar powered cars are the best. Look at how awesome those bad boys are and how fast they go. Solar will fix all this. Solar all the way!”
Recently the “solar challenge” ended in Australia, a 3000 km international competition from north to south, from Darwin to Adelaide. I am stinking proud that two Dutch universities (including my own Alma Mater) won in two categories:
1. cruiser/’family car’
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6Nl2tBWuLk
3000 km, 50 hours, 4 large Dutchies, driving on pure solar energy
2. single seater
tinyurl . com/otnx7tk
3000 km, 30 hours. Average speed 100 kmh. Top speed: 185 kmh!!
For environments like Australia, Africa, Arabia and Arizona, this is perfect. No grid necessary.