Natural Gas Conversions Could Cost a Couple Hundred

[Curtis]

Susan Kraemer , July 31st, 2009, gas2.org
Natural Gas Conversions Could Cost a Couple Hundred

But they don’t. It costs between $12,500 to $22,500 to convert a gasoline-powered car to natural gas in an autoshop. That old gas hog just can’t be greened up for cheap. Now. But it could be.

Go to: www.gas2.org for complete article and other alt fuel news.

[Adrian]

Re: Natural Gas Conversions Could Cost a Couple Hundred

Curtis,
The link does not work.

[drjeff]

Re: Natural Gas Conversions Could Cost a Couple Hundred

http://www.reuters.com/article/mnGre...86345020090801

[siai47]

Re: Natural Gas Conversions Could Cost a Couple Hundred

Nice thought---I don't think you could convert a rickshaw in Pakistan for "a couple hundred dollars"---must be a conspiricy ! True, there's many roadblocks to conversions but in reality the cost, even without regluation or government intervention, is much, much higher then the article alludes to. There must be secret forces out there driving us to big oil.

[jblue]

Re: Natural Gas Conversions Could Cost a Couple Hundred

Tank(s) alone push the cost way up.

[larrycng]

Re: Natural Gas Conversions Could Cost a Couple Hundred

There is an inacuracy in the Susan Kraemer's article; Rio Hondo was not the first California College teaching CNG Conversion, College of the Desert was, I believe, the first. In fact, Rio Hondo got their training from College of the Desert. I'm not sure about Yuba College, but someone could check with Bob Barkhouse, who ran the Yuba program at the time and was later mayor of Yuba city.

In fact I was the Evaluation Team Leader for Rio Hondo' s NATEF (National Automotive Technician Education Foundation which is part of ASE) certification in CNG when Jim Hughs was running the program at Rio

Just keeping history accurate

Larrycng

[Curtis]

Re: Natural Gas Conversions Could Cost a Couple Hundred

Sorry about the link. It should work now.

[eloo]

Re: Natural Gas Conversions Could Cost a Couple Hundred

Well, despite any inaccuracies in the article, I went ahead and emailed my Senate and Congress reps to please fix EPA's unreasonable licensing fee.
Picken's form at
http://www.capwiz.com/pickensplan/is...702871&type=CO
makes it real easy to send email to your reps.
If the costs comes down, I have a Surburban to convert.

[John Mitton]

Way off base...

Oh man, were do I start as to the inaccuracies?

1. As jblue states, the tanks are the killer component. For a truck it is at least $3,000 per vehicle assuming you use the least-expensive heavy Type 1 steel cylinders. In this case you must be careful, however, because EPA won't let you add more than 500 lbs to the vehicle without risking loss of your small volume manufacturer status - resulting in onerous in-use testing requirements, etc.

2. EPA fees are the greater of $750 or 1% of the value added by the conversion. So a typical conversion is going to run $50 to $150 per vehicle and your barrier to entry as to fees is only $750 (10-15 vehicle conversions or so). I guess if you plan on doing more than 100 vehicles you will hit the supposed $10,000 as the article states. But then with 100 vehicles your margins had better cover that or you need to bone up on your business math 101

I have told our contacts at EPA many times that these fees are ridiculous: the automaker has already paid fees to EPA on every vehicle we convert so they are double-dipping on us

Of course the significant cost is in lab testing to get to EPA or CARB certification, which must be amortized over the number of vehicles you are going to convert. The author should have focused on this in making her point.