What are the benefits and drawbacks to powering cars with natural gas?

Question

Is natural gas more or less efficient? Is it more or less expensive? Is it widely available for an average driver? Please include links. Thanks!

Answer 1

basically, natural gas is less efficient, although it is not the whole solution to the climate crisis or the fact that we are running out of oil. for example: ethanol, a natural gas made basically of corn, is about 30% less efficient as regular gas, but is just more bad news for us because 3rd world countries will plant corn for ethanol instead of wheat, and other crops, this will cause a world food shortage and the price of food and ethanol would skyrocket.

in my opinion, the best solution for humanity would be that we farm grow algae in special facilities (maybe even over dry oil fields) to convert into biodeisel. then we can eat all the corn we want. :)

Answer 2

i agree with peaches, by using ethanol we have created a bigger problem now instead of a gas shortage we have a food shortage. although corn is only a starch ( i am diabetic and can only have small amounts) it is important for animals like cows, chickens, etc. when people decided to make gas from the corn i doubt they thought about the other problems we would and now do have, not only is there a shortage of beef and chicken but now prices of meat, milk, cheese, eggs, etc. have gone up alot. milk was high enough at over $2 a gallon but now it is $3.50 a gallon.
one solution to this problem of gas shortage and food shortage is that we don't go, go, go all the time and we plant our own gardens and make our own food. go back to the old days of farming. carpool when you are going somewhere or ride the bus if you can, that way there are not so many cars on the road at one time.
we have become people who think you have to go all the time and do all kinds of things to be happy. this is not true!

if we don't start going less and stop waisting everything soon we will have to live like the old old days and ride horses and not have electric, etc. i don't think that any of us really want this so we all need to stop and think before that next trip to the mall, do we really need to go, is anyone else going we could catch a ride with?

Answer 3

Benefits: lower greenhouse gase emissions, lower cost (it's about $1.20 per gallon equivalent), reduced dependence on foreign oil.

Neutral: It's about as efficient as burning gasoline (equivalent of roughly 35 mpg for the Civic).

Drawbacks: lack of fueling infrastructure, need to lease the equipment to fuel at home, natural gas is a limited resource.

Answer 4

Natural gas is the gas that is piped into your house to burn in your water heater or stove or space heater.

Benefit is that it is much cleaner.

Drawback is that it is a gas and not a liquid and so harder to store, and that there is not enough of it in the world to power all the cars. Some of the cars, yes, but not all. Natural gas is a fossil fuel, just like petroleum, so it is in limited supply.

Answer 5

This answer uses a combination of what I believe, and what I got out of some links at the end of my answer.

There are several threads for addressing this question
* The economics for the car owner ... this should change dramatically as our political system encourages this technology due to the other threads, but it could be a long time coming
** the size of the fuel tank to store the stuff means that it takes up more space, and does not contain as far to drive between fuel-ups, which means it is good for driving around town, but not good for cross-country trips.
** How many places around the nation can a driver of such a vehicle get refueled? That limits where it is practical to drive such vehilces to a few mass transit systems where they can truck in their own fuels. It is just not practical to do cross-country driving, because drivers won't be able to find places to fuel up ... this can be fixed by arranging for maps to let people know where they can get it, like traditional merchandising markets maps where there is some brand of gas sold
** Cost of fuel is currently a hot topic ... on a miles per gallon basis, it is cheaper to fuel vehilces with natural gas, than using gasoline or diesel
* There is a national security dimension for the nation's dependency of foreign oil, mainly from the Middle East
** Can we ever contribute to peace there while we are addicted to oil from governments that treat their people horribly ... look at the mess in Sudan / Darfur ... I predict that so long as one side has control of most of the oil fields, most of the world will continue to look the other way with respect to the horrible genocide attrocities that side is doing in their Civil War
** If our nation ever again gets into a serious conflict, that is more than a regional conflict, it is not healthy for the prowess of the military to be dependent on resources that are not home grown ... China's military is growing by leaps & bounds, and the trend line is obvious that within the life times of children today, China will become more powerful than the USA, then if there is a serious conflict between USA & China, more serious than the ones so far, China will be able to blockade the delivery of oil to USA, or wherever US troops located
** currently natural gas is more likely to come from domestic sources ... but do we have enough for all our needs, such as home heating, future demands if more vehicles switched over to this approach?
* Then there is the question of the environment ... I know that many aspects of the environment are very controversial for some people, but you only have to look at the extremes of what happens when a government does nothing about it, like communists in Eastern Europe in the latter 1/2 of the 20th century. Of course we have to be sure we know what we are talking about ... replacing one kind of energy with another does not neccessarily reduce pollution, or dangerous emissions
** it is claimed that natural gas is cleaner than gasoline from petroleum ... smog is a big issue in many of our larger cities ... it is caused mainly by industry and vehicles ... this could be virtually eliminated by switching cars to various hybrids, and by imposing pollution controls on industry.

Many of same pros & cons apply to ethanol ... because Brazil government supported this long before USA, the current reality is that we can switch from dependency on Middle Eastern Oil to dependency on Brazil ethanol ... the crops that make the biofuels they also are used to feed farm animals, which may starve if we do heavy conversion of our farming to make crops for biofuels.

Here are some sources
http://www.epa.gov/oar/recipes/natgas.html

http://autos.yahoo.com/green_center-tech-fuel_natural_gas/;_ylc=X3oDMTBybXF0cjE1BF9TAzk3MjY0NTAyBHNlYwNzbXgEc2xrA3NteA--

http://www.usatoday.com/money/autos/2007-05-08-natural-gas-usat_N.htm

Answer 6

Go to yahoo auto's and then click on the green tab, then on natural gas to find what you are looking for.

Answer 7

Natural gas stinks Hold off for awhile this will be out soon . progress is really coming along great http://www.first-molecule.com

Answer 8

Simple. We are not using oil from the far east but are still polluting our environment.

We should stop building the hybrid cars and go straight into hydrogen.

Our health not our wealth of our planet is more important.