2012 Honda Civic Natural Gas Information Review

Hmmm.... maybe Honda's onto something here....
Honda Revs The Civic For US Natural Gas Push

by Jeff McMahon at Forbes blog

Honda’s plan to sell its Civic Natural Gas in all 50 states this fall positions the Japanese carmaker to take advantage of a market that American industry has been hesitant to enter.

But it’s a market that may blossom if Congress passes T. Boone Pickens’ Nat Gas Act.

The problem with compressed natural gas vehicles has been a lack of filling stations in the U.S. to keep them on the road. The problem with stations has been a lack of vehicles to keep them in business.

For this reason, American government and industry have settled on a strategy of converting fleets to natural gas, including public transit and government fleets, heavy-duty freight fleets that currently rely on diesel, and light-vehicle fleets like taxis that can refuel at a single location.
I

t takes a fleet to support a station, according to the Department of Energy, which offers this advice to people thinking of opening a compressed natural gas filling station:

The first task is to identify customers who will use the station. How many vehicles will use it, and what type? Are there alternative fuel fleets in the area? “In the past some people believed ‘if we build it they will come,’ but many speculative CNG stations have failed,” says Rob Adams, vice president of Marathon, which specializes in CNG station design. “If you don’t know who’s going to use the station, you shouldn’t build it.” There should be a base number of quantifiable customers, such as a local fleet of alternative fuel taxis, to get the station started, says Adams.

via Alternative Fuel News, DOE (pdf)
The U.S. approach has changed little since DOE published that best-practices brochure in 2003, even though the U.S. is much closer to tapping vast domestic sources of natural gas.

In testimony before the House Energy and Commerce Committee on Thursday, natural-gas-vehicle industry spokesman Richard Kolodziej emphasized the potential of natural gas to displace diesel fuel in heavy-duty trucking:

“While there are many options to displace gasoline in light duty vehicles, there are very few options to displace diesel,” he said. “If the role of the federal government is to reduce our dependence on foreign oil, and diesel is one of the problems, natural gas has to be one of the alternatives.”

Kolodziej testified in support of House Resolution 1380 — the New Alternative Transportation to Give Americans Solutions, or NAT GAS Act — which would provide tax credits for companies to buy and manufacture natural gas vehicles and build refueling stations. The bi-partisan bill, part of the Pickens Plan, has broad support, including 180 co-signers.

In testimony, Kolodziej said the bill would help convert fleets to natural gas:

The market tells us that vehicles are the highest value application of all natural-gas uses. Natural gas is the fastest growing alternative fuel globally…. Most of those are smaller sedans, but for a number of reasons, including the sheer geographic size of America, the strategy of the US NGV industry has been to focus on high fuel-use fleets: trash trucks, transit buses, short-haul 18-wheelers, school buses, urban delivery vehicles, shuttles of all kinds, and taxis.”

More stations for fleets will provide more stations for individual motorists—many stations perform double duty—and the bill should foster the market for natural gas vehicles across all sectors. There are about 112,000 NGVs on U.S. roads today compared to more than 12 million worldwide, according to NGVAmerica.org.

The Nat Gas Act will provide incentives for the production of natural gas vehicles in the U.S. Honda has been doing that since 1998, and the company believes now is the time to roll them out nationwide.

In September, a Honda executive told hybridcars.com the company planned to double sales. In April, it announced it will establish the Civic—long the only natural gas light-duty vehicle manufactured in the U.S.—as the first sold in all 50 states.

For the rest of the article;

http://blogs.forbes.com/jeffmcmahon/2011/05/09/honda-revs-the-civic-for-us-natural-gas-push/

The greenest car you've (likely) never heard of

By Mira Oberman (AFP)

GREENSBURG, Indiana — The greenest car you've likely never heard of will soon be hitting Honda showrooms across the United States as the Japanese automaker expands sales of its compressed natural gas powered Civic.

Honda has been quietly winning green car awards for more than a decade as it cautiously introduced the Civic GX first to government and business fleet owners and then retail customers in a handful of test markets.

The nationwide retail launch set for this fall comes as US President Barack Obama pushes for wider adoption of fuel-efficient vehicles -- including mandating that all federal cars will need to run on alternative, hybrid or electric power by 2015.

Potential customers could also be lured by substantial cost savings as oil prices climb amid tensions in the Middle East and natural gas prices fall in the wake of major new discoveries in the United States.

But the Civic GX enters a crowded field where new plug-in hybrid and fully electric cars -- the Chevy Volt and Nissan Leaf -- are grabbing headlines and zippy new compact cars offer competitive fuel economy.

Honda's goals are relatively modest -- doubling sales to around 4,000 vehicles in the first year of national sales while Nissan is hoping to hit annual US sales of 20,000 Leafs -- but it still thinks the GX can compete.

"We're asking the GX purchaser to make far fewer sacrifices than any other alternative fuel vehicle," Eric Rosenberg, who heads Honda's alternative fuel vehicle program in the United States.

"When you compare it to the Volt or Leaf, it's the most affordable, it has the best range and it has the quickest refill."

The GX can drive up to 250 miles (403 kilometers) on a single tank and only takes a few minutes to fill at public or home fueling station.

The Leaf has a range of 62 to 138 miles (100 to 222 kilometers) depending on road conditions and takes 30 minutes to partially charge at a quick-charge station and seven to 20 hours using a standard 220 or 110 volt outlet.

GM's Volt can drive 25 to 50 miles (40 to 80 kilometers) on its battery before switching over to a gasoline-powered engine and takes four to ten hours to charge.

Honda's GX is also the cleanest car on the US market, according to the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy which looks at a vehicle's total environmental impact.

That's because natural gas is a clean-burning fuel. It consists primarily of methane and emits about 30 percent less carbon dioxide and 70-90 percent less smog-forming particulates than gasoline.

Electric cars may emit nothing from the tailpipe, but they have a significant carbon footprint because 45 percent of US electricity is generated by coal. Their batteries also carry a heavy environmental toll.

Realtor and property manager Irma Vargas bought her first Civic GX in 2006 to save on fuel costs and get access to carpool lanes -- a perk that can cut a 90-minute commute in half in congested Los Angeles.

"Me and my business partner bought it and were going to take turns with it because it was a new idea," Vargas said in a telephone interview.

"We found that we were fighting over it, so he ended up getting the next year's model."

Vargas sold the GX to an employee so she could upgrade to a new model in 2008 and has convinced four of her friends and customers to buy one as well.

She figures she's saved thousands of dollars on fuel costs -- she can fill her GX at home for about a dollar a gallon while it costs nearly four dollars a gallon to fill her Lexus hybrid, which she saves for long trips and big shopping excursions.

But it will be years before the GX or electric cars are sold in sufficient numbers to make a significant dent in greenhouse gas emissions, cautioned Lonnie Miller, an analyst at auto research firm R. L. Polk.

"If you look at the traditional batch of gas-electric hybrids, it's 2.6 percent of all US new vehicle registrations," he told AFP.

"CNG (compressed natural gas) and electric, they're not even registering."

It took six years for US consumers to embrace hybrids, which require only a few tradeoffs like a higher initial price tag and limited trunk space.

Like fully-electric cars, the Civic GX requires a much bigger tradeoff.

While owners can fuel up at home with relatively cheap unit called "Phil," long-range trips are essentially out of the question because there are only about 870 public fueling stations in the entire country.

The cost and environmental advantages of compressed natural gas will nonetheless help boost global sales by 9.1 percent a year to 3.2 million vehicles in 2016, according to a recent report by green tech consulting firm Pike Research.

The biggest growth -- 25 percent a year -- is forecast in the United States, fueled primarily by sales to corporate and government fleets which typically operate their own fueling stations.

Honda started with fleet sales in 1998 and offered the GX to retail customers in California and New York in 2005 as more fueling stations came online.

It expanded retail sales to Utah and Oklahoma in 2008 and 2009 as tax incentives in those natural-gas producing states drew more customers, but has only sold a little over 12,000 of the vehicles so far.

"The whole idea was for us as a company to learn how to retail the car," Honda's Rosenberg said. "It is a little different, it has a few idiosyncrasies."

The experience with the relatively-low cost GX will serve as a good model for the introduction of the holy grail of green cars -- the far more expensive and complex hydrogen fuel cell.

Honda was the first automaker to introduce a hydrogen fuel cell prototype in 1999 and began testing a small fleet with retail customers in 2005. It also plans to introduce a plug-in hybrid next year.

Source;

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5hCf_fLO4psJO3PVln1xGpzEXPVbQ?docId=CNG.8fcda49acdd6feab37caa2b17f3b1a60.261

Honda Civic GX Natural-Gas Vehicle: First Drive Review

Good read, apparently the GX model for 2012 will be available for Canada, potentially on a order by order basis....
So here's the bottom line on driving a natural-gas vehicle: If you didn't have to refill it, you'd never know it was fueled on anything other than gasoline.

Except for two things, that is: First, you lose up to half of a gasoline car's range, with our natural-gas fueled Honda Civic GX only providing about 180 miles before it needs more fuel (against up to 400 miles for the gasoline Civic).

Second, you also lose about two-thirds of the trunk space offered in a standard Civic sedan, because the high-pressure natural-gas tank is located at the rear of the trunk.

Driving: indistinguishable
Other than that, natural gas may be the easiest alternative fuel to use--if there's a public fueling station nearby.

The performance is indistinguishable from the gasoline equivalent, and from behind the wheel, you'd never know it wasn't the real stuff.

If anything, we thought our GX might be a bit quieter than other Civics we've tested, but we couldn't do a side-by-side comparison to check out our impression.

Only one test car nationwide
Honda is presently the only manufacturer that sells natural-gas vehicles to the public, and at the moment, it only does so in four regional markets--Oklahoma being the latest.

We'd wanted to test a Civic GX for a while, but it took a trip to Los Angeles to make it happen, because there's only a single one in the company's nationwide media fleet.

We actually drove a 2009 model, but the 2010 and 2011 models are essentially unchanged. The Civic will be entirely redesigned for the 2012 model year, when Honda says it will make the GX natural-gas model available in all 50 states.

Pricey for a base Civic
On the window sticker, the suggested retail price for the Civic GX is listed as $18,255. Then in very tiny letters, there's a single line that says, "Incremental Cost (CNG)" and adds another $6,935, for a total price of $25,860.

Source;
http://www.greencarreports.com/review/1051854_honda-civic-gx-natural-gas-vehicle-first-drive-review

Honda Confirms Next-Gen Civic GX Natural Gas Vehicle

by Brian Moody

In Translogic episode 6.2 we took a look at one of the cleanest yet most obscure green cars sold in the U.S., the 2011 Honda Civic GX. The GX is just like every other Civic, except that its engine burns compressed natural gas (CNG) rather than gasoline.

Honda confirmed to Translogic that when the company redesigns the Civic for its ninth generation, there will be a Honda Civic GX. Since the GX sells in such small numbers, there was speculation that it might be dropped when Honda undertakes a complete overhaul of the Civic, as it has scheduled for the 2012 model year. But Honda is dedicated to the CNG Civic and says hopes to make it a bigger part of their alt-fuel efforts.

Ever since the car's introduction in 1998, the Civic GX has really been more of a fleet car rather than typical retail car the average shopper would consider. In 2009, Honda sold just 1,757 Civic GX's.

The car's fleet origins mean the interior is a little lackluster. It's no secret, Honda already knows the Civic GX lacks the bells and whistles even sub-compact owners have come to expect. Jessica Fini with American Honda said "Due to customer feedback, the 2012 Honda Civic GX NGV will be more comfortable and offered with desirable options like a navigation system and upgraded stereo." Perhaps the secret of the Civic GX is about to get out.

Honda also confirmed that the 2012 Honda Civic GX will not deviate from the current car's basic formula of being a Honda Civic first and foremost and a NGV second. The Formula seems to be working; the 2010 Civic GX was named "Greenest Vehicle" by the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy.

But the picture isn't all rosy for the natural gas powered Civic, a lack of public CNG fueling stations could put a damper on Civic GX ownership. For instance, according to cngprices.com, there are just two CNG refueling stations in the Atlanta area and one requires special key-card for access and there's just one CNG station between Miami and Jacksonville. On the other hand, cities like Boston, Denver, New York, Salt Lake City and Tulsa, Oklahoma have many CNG stations. California seems to have the most CNG stations of any other state: San Francisco, Sacramento and Los Angeles combined probably have more re-fueling stations than the entire rest of the country. Even so, some CNG stations in the Los Angeles area are 10-20 miles away from the center of many suburban communities. There is a reward once you find a station, many people are paying the equivalent of $1.07-$2.60 per gallon.

Some Civic GX owners can capitalize on the low price of CNG and skip the infrastructure worries by outfitting their homes with a refueling mechanism that uses the natural gas already piped to most homes. The cost is about $4,600 but you can get a tax credit of $2,000. The company that made the Phill refueling unit was purchased by another company so it's unclear if an individual in every state can still get a natural gas compressor installed at home. Gas Equipment Systems Inc has offices in California and Texas so that's a good place to start

Honda says the Civic GX is the cleanest burning internal combustion engine in the world. But for every advantage with the CNG powered Civic, there seems to be a disadvantage. The Civic GX isn't especially thrilling to drive; with its 1.8 liter engine making just 113 hp, the car feels slower than a regular Civic. A gasoline powered Civic with a 1.8 liter engine makes 140 hp – a difference that's noticeable to the average driver. Also, the Honda Civic GX costs a little more than $25,000. By comparison, a Honda Civic EX with leather and navigation is still about $2,000 less. And the Civic EX cruises to a combined EPA estimate of 29 mpg. The equivalent combined fuel economy estimate for the Civic GX is 28 mpg. Those who buy a new 2010 Honda Civic GX may qualify for a $4,000 tax credit and Californians who buy a new Civic GX will qualify for the states zero emission HOV stickers which means you can use the carpool lane even if you're alone in the car.

In the end, the Honda Civic GX's green credential are rock solid, what's not so clear is if the car makes sense for the average green leaning motorist. Honda already has a Civic Hybrid, Insight Hybrid and the sporty CR-Z Hybrid plus the gasoline powered Honda Fit gets a respectable 36 miles per gallon on the highway. The difference is all of Honda's fuel sippers can be fueled up at the local filling station while the Civic GX can't and that's really the car's Achilles heel.

Source;

http://translogic.aolautos.com/2010/09/15/exclusive-honda-confirms-next-gen-civic-gx-natural-gas-vehicle/