A Breath of Fresh Air

It’s a warm summer morning at an unmarked fueling station, where a narrow hose dangling from an oddly crane-like pump with a faint whiff of kitchen stove is whooshing a high-pressure load of methane gas into a 2001 Honda Civic GX.

This is the car hailed as the cleanest internal-combustion auto on Earth. The driver--yours truly--is hoping for what’s known in the natural-gas world as “a good fill,” because about 190 miles of lethally oven-like Mojave Desert separate me from the next fuel station, and the Civic has an advertised range of 200 miles per tankful.

That’s right, the same natural gas that cooks your eggs can also run your car. And though you’ll glow smugly about contributing virtually nothing dirty to the environment, and be able to drive solo in California’s carpool lanes, you’ll find yourself keeping a wary eye out for that fabled “Point of No Return.”

Welcome to life in the methane lane.

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Compressed natural gas, or CNG, has been around as a vehicle fuel since well before World War II. A generation ago it was favored in the United States by rugged individualists scorning gasoline’s occasional scarcities and price spikes. By the mid-1990s, CNG was powering hundreds of corporate and government fleets, paying off in fat fuel savings and slashed maintenance costs.

But CNG never caught on with the public. For one thing, the tanks gobble up a lot more space than gasoline tanks, and they are made of heavy steel to boot. In addition, CNG vehicles have a much shorter range between fill-ups, and in most cities a sparse infrastructure of filling stations was designed with interurban fleets--not hordes of consumers--in mind.

So here’s the yin of Earth-friendly motoring: You have to stop more often for fuel and usually have to drive miles out of your way to reach it.

The yang: CNG users last week were paying $1.048 per gasoline-gallon-equivalent at Southern California Gas Co.’s local depots; compare that with gasoline prices still well above $1.50 in most of the region. CNG cars produce stunningly few emissions; it’s been pointed out that such vehicles add more harmful toxins to the atmosphere because of tire wear than engine operation.

And today, with improved technology and favorable public policy measures leading the way--and the recent return of natural gas prices to more traditional levels after a record run-up last winter--CNG proponents are making another run at winning the hearts and minds of motorists.

Mike Eaves, the Gas Co.’s natural-gas vehicle program manager, estimates that there are at least 14,000 CNG vehicles on the road in Southern California. That number is expected to grow as fleet owners turn over their inventory by buying new vehicles and sending the old ones off to auction lots, where they often go for bargain prices.

Moreover, the once-dim fuel supply situation is brightening, with retailers building new filling stations, more private yards opening to public sales, and home refueling systems apparently around the corner.

For now, the most important reason people are driving home in the methane-powered Honda Civic GX is that they get there faster because California allows single drivers in CNG vehicles to use carpool lanes, said Stephen Ellis, alternative-fuels manager for the Torrance-based U.S. arm of Honda Motor Co.

That incentive tipped the scales to methane for Joseph Rossini of Claremont, whose two-hour commute to downtown Los Angeles has been trimmed to a speedy 45 minutes aboard his CNG-powered Ford Crown Victoria.

The $6,000-higher price tag for the natural gas Ford was offset, Rossini said, by eligibility for a $2,000 federal tax deduction and a $3,000 rebate through a South Coast Air Quality Management District program that has paid out $5 million in clean-air vehicle incentives in 4 1/2 years.

Rossini, a construction contract attorney, noted a more intangible perk: “I’ve never been accused of being a tree hugger; now everybody thinks I’m this big environmentalist. Even my 15-year-old daughter thinks I’m cool.”

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The full-size, cushy Crown Victoria and the compact, no-nonsense Honda Civic GX (which lists at $4,500 more than a gasoline-powered LX) are the only CNG-only cars available on major auto makers’ showroom floors.

But the methane-powered product lineup may expand soon. General Motors Corp. is weighing an initiative to offer the motoring public a bi-fuel Chevy Cavalier that would be a good compromise in size and performance between the Honda and Ford Motor Co.’s boat-like Crown Vic. “Bi-fuel” means it can run on either gasoline or CNG.

Until now, the Cavalier has been sold only to fleet buyers, but a decision to green-light broader sales may come as soon as this month, said Clay Okabayashi, Chevy’s Ventura County-based regional alternative-fuel sales manager.

Toyota Motor Corp. is taking the opposite tack, with U.S. executives blaming a lag in fuel availability as the key reason they are abandoning a two-year trial program leasing CNG-powered Camrys to fleet users.

Those cars will be withdrawn at the end of this model year, and the company will redirect resources into expanding its lineup of models powered by hybrid gasoline-electric systems, said Len Fein, advanced technology vehicles manager.

Even so, natural gas industry executives say, the infrastructure picture is a lot brighter than painted by Toyota’s move.

Sean Turner, president of the California Natural Gas Vehicle Coalition, said there are 85 filling stations in Southern California. That’s minuscule compared with the estimated 3,500 gasoline filling stations in the region, so Southern California Gas has been working to get operators of government and private CNG fueling depots to provide public access.

One hurdle, Eaves notes, is that most existing stations are not equipped with the satellite uplinks that allow credit card billing. But seven new Southern California outlets being added by PFC eFuels Inc., the leading seller of CNG vehicle fuel, will dispense at the swipe of a major credit card, said sales manager Jim Harger.

Honda has also moved to ease the supply crunch, last year buying a 20% share of FuelMaker Corp., a Toronto company that plans within two years to introduce a home-refueling device with a potential market of 3 million customers. FuelMaker President and Chief Executive John Lyon said the under-$1,000 appliance would enable motorists to fill up right from their household gas pipes.

Meanwhile, the Natural Gas Vehicle Coalition in Washington is seeking congressional passage of incentives such as a federal income tax credit to cover 80% of the higher cost of new CNG vehicles.

Coalition President Richard Kolodziej said such measures could help multiply the 111,000 natural gas vehicles on U.S. roads to about 1.6 million by 2010--with the payoff being cleaner air in big cities.

“Our strategy is to build a network of fueling stations in population centers and along corridors between them,” Kolodziej said.

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Which would be welcome news to anybody who has tried taking a long trip in a CNG vehicle--a trip guaranteed to reawaken the pioneer spirit.

Back in Victorville, where I was fueling a borrowed Civic for a trip to Las Vegas, I calculated my Point of No Return as Baker, Calif.--meaning once there, I had better have at least half a tankful or risk getting stuck before reaching Vegas and the next available fueling port, at McCarran International Airport.

I took no chances, setting off at well under the speed limit and with the air conditioner turned off, measures other CNG drivers told me would help save fuel.

With the fuel-gauge needle hovering over the E, the Civic rolled safely into Vegas. But when I got to McCarran, which is listed in the California Natural Gas Vehicle Coalition guidebook showing the location and operating hours of CNG fueling depots, I was told that the pumps were shut down because of an on-site power failure.

Fortunately, Southwest Gas Corp. marketing supervisor Jay Taylor showed up and escorted me across town to his company’s yard for a fill-up.

“When you run out of fuel in one of these things, you’re [plum] out of luck,” Taylor offered cheerfully. “You have to get towed.”

The next day, I discovered what “a good fill” means. With just the tankful from the Southwest Gas depot, I headed south on Interstate 15 directly from the Rio hotel--only to run well short of half a tank at least a mountain range short of the Point of No Return.

Which meant turning around and heading back to McCarran for that elusive good fill--and a 1 1/2-hour delay.

What exactly is a good fill?

Even experienced CNG drivers are mystified about how to get one reliably. Industry representatives explain that the temperature of the supply tank is among the variables; so are the age and condition of the equipment. A good fill is a good bet on a cold day, when the gas contracts at a pumping pressure of 3,000 or 3,600 pounds per square inch. New equipment usually provides a good fill--but sometimes it doesn’t.

In tacit acknowledgment of that, the Honda’s fuel gauge has two “full” marks: a lower F for a fair fill, a higher F for a good fill.

Go figure.

“You can consider yourself a pioneer,” Taylor said later by telephone. “You wouldn’t have been able to make that trip a year ago.”

Sure enough, Victorville Public Works Director Guy Patterson said the Victor Valley Transportation Center was linked to a major credit card billing system--effectively opening it to the public--only in November.

And though the Los Angeles-to-Las Vegas trip is thus within range, the 350-mile drive between San Diego and Phoenix is still just a dream for CNG motorists until a public station is built in Yuma.

Which means for the time being, CNG drivers will need to keep one important point in mind: the Point of No Return.

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Michael P. Lucas is a copy editor for The Times’ Valley and Ventura County editions. He can be reached at michael.lucas@latimes.com.