A Natural Road Trip

A word about packing: a large cylindrical tank fills most of the trunk, leaving about enough space for a set of golf clubs. If you are packing for a family trip, as I was, use several soft bags that can be squished into the spaces around the tank. Given the limitations of the fueling infrastructure—and the crowded trunk—for now Honda recommends the GX as an ideal second car, best for commuting. Based on my experience, it'll be a while before we are all road-tripping on natural gas.

The fun part is paying at the pump. Natural gas is astonishingly cheap. On the day I took my training, it was selling in San Francisco for the equivalent of $2.99 a gallon, versus $4.56 a gallon for regular unleaded. As the price of gas tumbled over the past week, natural gas also came down. At a station near San Diego, where the price of regular gas had fallen to $3.95 a gallon (the first sub-$4 gas I've seen in California since June), an equivalent unit of CNG was $2.57. The cheapest price we paid on our drive north was the equivalent of $2.27 per gallon. And the costs vary widely around the country: one Web site (www.cngprices.com) showed gallon-equivalent prices as low as 85 cents in Utah, and around $1.99 per gallon in New Jersey. In California, where most GX's are sold, the cars come with the coveted diamond sticker, which allows free access to carpool lanes and free tolls on most bridges. (The diamond stickers are so popular that used Toyota Priuses, which once came with the stickers, actually sell for a premium over new ones.)

If you are wondering why it's not so easy to get some of the hooch, consider this: oil companies have no motivation to spend the billions required to convert gasoline stations into natural-gas stations, since natural gas sells for a third to half the cost of gasoline. "Would you invest a lot of money to make your main product lower value?" says Don Hillebrand, director of transportation research at Argonne National Laboratory. "Natural gas is not the silver bullet."

And to get that cheap fuel, you are going to have to pony up for the car. A Honda Civic GX starts at $24,590; a comparable gas-powered Honda Civic LX would cost $16,960. Even if you factor in the $4,000 federal tax credit for buying a natural-gas vehicle, that's a price premium of $3,630. Installing a natural-gas pump in your home garage costs $5,300 to $6,200 (though it will allow you to fill up at home for the equivalent of $1.30 to $2.00 per gallon). There, too, you can earn a federal tax credit of $1,000.

Depending on how much you drive, and where gas prices go, it could take years for the average consumer to realize a payoff on a natural-gas car. Still, according to a Honda spokesman, there are waiting lists at dealerships for the 1,100-odd Honda GX's sold in the U.S. each year (of those, only 612 went to individuals, the rest were sold to fleets). "Demand has increased exponentially, says Todd Mittelman of American Honda. "The major motivators seem to be gas prices and free access to carpool lanes."

There are also environmental considerations. While natural gas is a cleaner fuel than gasoline, it is still a fossil fuel. Environmentalists, including Al Gore, would prefer to transition directly to plug-in hybrids powered by electricity from renewable sources. Pickens agrees plug-in hybrids are the answer, eventually, but in the meantime he views natural gas as a "bridge fuel" that can be used until plug-in technology is economical. The first plug-in hybrids are expected to hit the U.S. market in 2010. Pickens thinks it'll take a couple of decades until gas-powered cars can be replaced completely.

Who knows? Our mission in the Honda GX was to test the natural-gas infrastructure-and have some fun. After our first fill up in Santa Monica ($8.52 for half a tank) we drove south to Fallbrook, Calif., a distance of 198.7 miles in heavy traffic. We filled up again in Oceanside, north of San Diego, at a station outside the gates of a natural-gas-fired power plant. Hint: these stations do not have giant, driver-friendly signs. Even after mapping our destination, we had to search long and hard to find the obscure driveway that led to the fuel pump. Price for our second fill up: $13.44. The stations are spartan—and there are no restrooms. So you will find yourself stopping at standard gas stations for life's little comforts.

We never spent more than $20 for a fill up, and our fuel efficiency ranged from 26-40mpg. The four-cylinder CNG-powered engine labored in steep mountain passes—and generally lacked pickup—but did fine at cruising speeds and in city driving. While I loved zooming past all the fossil fools from the comfort of the diamond lane, the biggest kick for me was coming to work across the normally clogged San Francisco Bay Bridge. Thanks to my virtuous, low-carbon fuel, I got to zoom for free through the toll booth (saving $4 right there) and onto the bridge. Now if it only came with free parking.

With Keith Naughton in Detroit

© 2008