All the car company can offer a choice to users, what they want and they can do it same price. We just need more car mechanic shops offering this service for conversion.

RE: road tax. I image that we will move away from ‘pay at the pump’ to a ‘pay based on annual miles driven’ basis. It wouldn’t take long to drive through a check point once a year and let someone peer at your odometer. And it could be read by RF later on….

Perhaps NG vehicles are not favored because the fuel would be harder to tax? I’m not sure, but the same problem will come in spades as PHEVs become more common (and fuel efficiency in general improves). I realize the importance of taxes (at least in theory) but I don’t think that should be a reason to oppose technically sound solutions to our energy problems. (You can always tax the tires if you have to….)

We could retrofit existing vehicles for NG. And it might be possible to design future ICE vehicles so that owners are given a NG/gas tank option.

As for infrastructure and range, fleets. The company cars and service trucks that are used around town can fill up in the company yard and likely don’t need the lost trunk/bed space. It can start there and build out. Again in Thailand, some gas stations have added NG pumps.

20% less is a bunch better than not 20% less. Neither are as good as renewable wind -> EV which is close to 100% better, but at this point in time, any improvement is helpful.

Yes, all downsides. But not fatal downsides, IMO.

There is a lack of companies making vehicles and a lack of infrastructure to refuel the cars, so right now its relatively expensive to buy and fuel these vehicles.

Natural gas is a fossil fuel, so emits carbon. It has a total carbon footprint of corn based ethanol, so about 20% better than petroleum. It’s a bridge to a truly a carbon-free transportation system.

Natural gas has a lower energy content compared to gas so natural gas vehicles have a shorter driving range.

The upsides, as I see it, are:

1) that we extract the gas “in country” and keep massive amounts of money in our economy rather than flowing overseas to countries that often don’t like us much.

2) we avoid the problems of having to refine crude into usable forms.

3) perhaps minor, but NG spills don’t run off into our waterways and soak into our aquifers.

4) we can supplement the NG stream with biogas.

I suppose there are the fracking issues….

The main component of Natural Gas, methane can also be derived from biomass sources via anaerobic digestion. Methane can also be synthesized directly from renewable energy sources such as wind or solar. This is done by electrolyzing water to produce hydrogen and then reacting hydrogen with CO2 (plenty of THAT around!) that can be extracted from the atmosphere. (4H2 + CO2 -> CH4 + 2H2O)

Probably the best way to displace gasoline in transportation using totally renewable sources is to use renewable methane and electricity in a PHEV burning NG.