You can't see electric cars in the future? Just oil?

They converted every Police car and City Bus in Phoenix to run on CNG almost 10 years ago!!

deluxe and how much does that cost? a lot of what they want to do is too expensive for regular people to afford.

Last time I heard it costs about $1.40 a gallon for CNG. Way cheaper than gas or deisel and you also have improved service and maintenance.

Where I used to work, since it was inside, we had a whole fleet of forklifts and personnel lifts that were all propane powered. Thats the way we ordered them. Simple conversion on the engines and they burn clean/safe indoors.

The mechanics loved them and said they are much easier to maintain than gas or deisel burners. Oil stays cleaner too.

but what is the cost to convert the cars or for the cars that use this?

Clean Energy is the Future....better start getting used to the idea.

is that in addition to what the car already costs? can ya tell I have no clue????

Yes, in addition to the cost of the vehicle.

Arizona even had a program out here a few years ago where the State would reimburse you 50% of the cost of your vehicle if you bought an "Alternative Fuel" vehicle. A lot of people went out and bought brand new factory converted or dealer converted vehicles that ran on gas or propane. You got a $40,000 truck for $20,000.

but you said it still uses oil....just burns cleaner right?

gotcha. so in theory (besides lube lol) you can't get away from oil.....just cleaner burning correct?

Problem is, natural gas is a byproduct of oil, thus still needs oil. And I actually looked it up and now these cars get great gas mileage on CNG. But the problem is, there aren't enough fueling stations and the prices jump during cold months due to demand. And there is less natural gas than oil, so a mass switch over would disrupt prices dramatically. But its interesting, didn't know that CNG tech had advanced so well in the last few years.

Problem is, natural gas is a byproduct of oil, thus still needs oil. And I actually looked it up and now these cars get great gas mileage on CNG. But the problem is, there aren't enough fueling stations and the prices jump during cold months due to demand. And there is less natural gas than oil, so a mass switch over would disrupt prices dramatically. But its interesting, didn't know that CNG tech had advanced so well in the last few years.

If natural gas fuel saved you, say, $2 per gallon, then you'd have to drive 124,020 highway miles or 82,680 city miles to break even on fuel costs against the $6,890 purchase price premium.

You can convert an existing car from gasoline to natural gas, but the costs are daunting.

Converting a car to dual-use (as in Iran) costs between $6,000 to $10,000. Converting a car to run on natural gas only is about half as expensive.

Even so, the conversion has to be done correctly or, in the worst case, you risk leaks that could turn your car into an improvised explosive device. And if your car is altered without proof of EPA certification, you might not get any of the all-important conversion tax credits.

Then there's the inconvenience. Though their fuel tanks are larger -- which, incidentally, reduces trunk space -- natural gas cars have less range.

While a new Honda Civic can go as far as 500 miles on a tank of gasoline, the GX's range is less than half of that -- and, currently, there are only about 1,600 natural-gas refueling stations across the country, compared with 200,000 gasoline stations.

If your home uses natural gas, you could buy a home filling station at a cost of about $2,000 plus installation. While home filling stations can further reduce fuel costs to substantially below $2 per gallon, the devices take about 4 hours to replenish the fuel consumed by only 50 miles of driving. So much for gas-and-go.

Moving past the personal expense and inconvenience, the broader implications of natural-gas cars are worrisome.

The U.S. currently uses about 23 trillion cubic feet of natural gas per year. Like all commodities, the price of natural gas is supply-and-demand dependent.

Switching just 10 percent of the U.S. car fleet to natural gas would dramatically increase our consumption of natural gas by about 8 percent (1.9 trillion cubic feet) -- an amount that is slightly less than one-half of all current residential natural gas usage and one-quarter of all industrial usage.

The price ramifications of such a demand spike would likely be significant. The current cost advantage of natural gas over gasoline could easily be reversed. Our move toward energy independence could also be compromised.

Domestic production of natural gas has not kept pace with rapidly increasing demand. Consequently, about 15 percent of our natural gas must now be imported.

Without more domestic gas drilling, additional demand will need to be met with natural gas imported by pipeline and in liquefied form from the very same foreign sources that T. Boone Pickens rails about in the context of oil.

In its most recent annual outlook, the U.S. Department of Energy projects that the U.S. natural-gas market will become more integrated with natural-gas markets worldwide as the U.S. becomes more dependent on imported liquefied natural gas -- causing greater uncertainty in future U.S. natural-gas prices.

The natural-gas supply problem will be additionally magnified if significant greenhouse-gas regulation is enacted.

Here's how: Currently, when natural gas gets too expensive, electric utilities often substitute coal or cheaper fuels for power generation.

Under a greenhouse-gas regulation scheme, however, inexpensive coal might no longer be an alternative because of the significantly greater greenhouse-gas emissions involved with its combustion.

Utilities, and ultimately consumers, could easily find themselves at the mercy of natural-gas barons