Wednesday, January 31, 2007

Honda's Civic GX

The Honda Civic GX runs on methane, a compressed natural gas. It is currently only available for retail sale in California and New York. It does offer benefits over traditional gasoline-powered cars:
  1. The methane burns much cleaner than gasoline.
  2. The natural gas is more fuel-efficient than gasoline ("slightly")
  3. It is less expensive to fuel the car - the EPA estimates the cost of natural gas is the equivalent of about 70 cents less than a gallon of gasoline
  4. Most of the natural gas we have here in the U.S. is from the U.S. - the rest is from Canada.
Due to the current $4000 tax credit given by the U.S. government, the cost is not much more than a traditional Honda Civic.

Some of the downsides listed in the article - there aren't currently many places where natural gas can be purchased; the tank is bigger than a traditional car's fuel tank, so the trunk space is smaller; the resale value won't match up to a Honda Civic Hybrid according to one expert; and the tank only has a range of 220 miles. Due to these downsides, the GX will most likely only be a government fleet vehicle (already seen) for now.

Labels:

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home