Natural gas considered for trucking fuel

[longknife]

United Press International ^ | March. 22, 2013

Posted on Sunday, March 24, 2013 414 PM by 2ndDivisionVet

Amid the nation's shale gas boom, natural gas is being considered as an alternative to diesel to fuel heavy trucks.

The "Blueprint for a Clean and Secure Energy Future" unveiled by U.S. President Barack Obama last week calls for "putting in place new incentives" for medium- and heavy-duty trucks that run on natural gas or other alternative fuels and providing a credit for 50 percent of the incremental cost of a dedicated alternative-fuel truck for a 5-year period.

"The natural gas vehicle market is already growing but the vehicle incentives the president calls for would help accelerate that growth and help displace foreign oil use even faster," Richard Kolodziej, president of Natural Gas Vehicles for America, an organization that promotes natural gas and biomethane as transportation fuels, said in a statement.

Frederick W. Smith, chairman and chief executive of FedEx Corp., told The Wall Street Journal he expects 5-30 percent of the nation's long-distance trucking to be fueled by compressed or liquefied natural gas over 10 years.

FedEx is testing four trucks, two each for liquefied and compressed gas. If the trial works well, the company will consider switching more of its 90,000 vehicles to the fuel, Smith said, adding, "We'd be remiss if we didn't."

Meanwhile, hundreds of FedEx's lighter vehicles are electric or hybrids.....

About time! I drove an lpg taxi and it was better than gasoline. Read more @ Trucks may switch from diesel to natural gas as a fuel - UPI.com

 

[Underhill]

I'm all for it. But forget heavy trucks. Let me hook a pump/filter to the side of my house and fill up my VW.

Which is a lot of the reason oil and gas companies aren't in favor of it for the average consumer.

But it does make a lot of sense for an interim solution. Conversion is relatively cheap. Car companies could easily swap many of their cars to Natural Gas.