Entrepreneur Drives Change : Environment: Arthur Sweet’s device compresses household natural gas into a tank in the trunk of a car.

Arthur Sweet eased his 1986 Lincoln Town Car along smog-clouded Ventura Boulevard and pointed at the tailpipe of the Mazda in the next lane.

“See that guy? He’s polluting,” said the 72-year-old entrepreneur. “If we could take cars like that car off the road and replace them with these, we could clean up the whole basin.”

Although Sweet’s four-door beast looks like a gas guzzler, it releases only about 20% of the toxins spewed by most other cars on the road because it runs on natural gas, the same stuff used in stoves and high school biology labs.

This environmental good turn, Sweet hopes, will mean a greening of his wallet as well.

After equipping his Lincoln with a scuba-style natural gas tank and other equipment in 1993, the Encino real estate developer started Goremotive Industries, which recently developed a device that compresses gas from ordinary household gas lines into a tank in the trunk of his car.

Although it is not yet on the market, Sweet’s unit would compete with the FuelMaker, a similar Canadian-made product, and home gas converters being developed by other small companies.

Sweet is part of a gold rush of entrepreneurs flocking to the clean-burning-vehicle business, each hoping to stake a claim in a developing industry.

He envisions a society in which people come home from work, plug their cars into their gas lines and the next morning drive away with a 300-mile range before having to switch to conventional fuel.

The technology in Sweet’s Lincoln and his wife’s 1990 Chrysler has been used mostly for the fleets of public agencies such as post offices and utilities, which are usually equipped with their own natural gas fueling stations, said Warren Mitchell, chairman of the Natural Gas Vehicle Coalition and president of the Gas Co.

While most prototype clean-burning cars are being developed by the Big Three auto makers and large consortiums of public and private organizations, Mitchell said, many advances in components and fueling technology have been made by tiny enterprises.

Their contributions could help bust open a vast market of car owners willing to pay thousands extra for a less-polluting drive and the convenience of overnight refueling.

“Home refueling is a very good idea,” Mitchell said. “People don’t have to go to a service station, and they feel good about having a clean-burning vehicle. It’s a wide-open market, and business people are picking a particular niche and getting in early.”

Many investors, Mitchell said, feel vehicles capable of using natural gas could be the quickest route to fewer auto emissions.

Unlike electric car technology, which has stalled on the problem of battery capacity, converting to natural gas requires few changes to engines with fuel-injection systems because they can operate on natural gas as easily as standard fuel.

Sweet said he converted his Lincoln for about $4,600. And with the flick of a switch, he can alternate between using natural gas and standard fuel.

The main drawbacks are the bulky tanks that virtually eliminate trunk space, the hours-long fueling time and the price of extra equipment.

But because natural gas is easier on engines and about 30 cents cheaper than the equivalent gallon of fuel, Mitchell said, conversion may be cost-effective in the long run.

Sweet embarked on his new business last year after reading Vice President Al Gore’s book “Earth in the Balance,” which urges people to become part of the solution to smog and other environmental hazards. Inspired, he named his company after the veep.

In June, Goremotive was awarded its first government grant: $75,000 from the U.S. Department of Energy to study ways to make natural gas burn more cleanly. The company was one of 200 recipients chosen from 2,374 applicants, Sweet said.

“There are a lot of people getting going in this business,” Sweet said. “Things are going to change.”