Previews
Greenie spendthrifts wanted: A heavier, slower Civic with a smaller trunk. Oh, yeah, and it costs 50 percent more.
Never mind that we in Michigan are just emerging from our igloos after a long cold winter. The world is heating up, the ice caps are melting, and when that melt is complete, we’ll all be living high in the mountains in houses on stilts to stay dry. Forty days and 40 nights the waters will rage, and when the ice caps refreeze, we’ll all be fighting over who called first dibs on those last two pigs for our celebratory barbecues, since the unicorns were already eaten by sharks.
There are people who would argue that that sinister little creation, the automobile, is responsible for it all. We blame Al Gore, China, sweatshops, and greenie celebrities who flit about in private jets. Those who want to make a difference drive hybrids, while those who researched their decision drive diesels. Those who are truly enlightened and want to make a difference, however, seek something higher, lighter, more ethereal. They find natural gas.
For the most part, the hunt is conducted outside of new-car showrooms, although the game is no longer found in the back-yard sheds of neighborhood madmen or the workshops of “some guy my uncle’s caterer’s yoga instructor knows,” but in experienced shops that sometimes charge twice the list price of the customer’s 1989 Toyota Corolla to convert it to natural-gas propulsion.
The Only Natural-Gas-Powered Vehicle Available to New-Car Buyers in the U.S.
Natural-gas seekers in California and New York, however, can simply stroll into a Honda dealership, plunk down $25,185 for a new Civic GX sedan—a premium of $8780 over a $16,405 base Civic DX automatic—and whoosh out of the showroom on a massive tide of self-empowerment and an itty-bitty ripple of torque: 103 pound-feet, to be exact.
Originally conceived as a parking-enforcement cruiser in L.A. back in 1998, the GX was strictly a fleet vehicle meant to do its small part to reduce pollution. Emissions from natural-gas-burning engines are a fraction of those of similarly sized gasoline units, the GX being recognized by the EPA as the cleanest-burning engine it had ever tested when introduced. Today, when the EPA’s Tier 2 Bin 5 standards are causing a panic among auto execs, the Civic GX easily skips past Bin 5 and is the only vehicle to meet the lofty Tier 2 Bin 2 standards. If this talk of tiers and bins makes no sense, just be impressed by the fact that the GX is so clean it is the only vehicle in its emissions class. In 2005, Honda saw fit to finally offer the Civic GX directly to the public in California. New York citizens have only been able to buy the car since October 2006.
A Few Compromises and A Gas Station in Your GarageIt Ain’t Magic—The Greenie Car Comes with a Few Compromises
Why only California and New York? Because that pricing premium and the torque output—15 percent below the base car’s 128 pound-feet—are just the beginning of the compromises to be made in the name of lower emissions and a head seat at the greenie table. The car’s trunk shrinks from a reasonable 12 cubic feet in dinosaur-fueled form to just 6 cubic feet with the tanks for the compressed natural gas (CNG) taking up residence behind the back seats. If that were all the luggage space we needed, we’d be driving a Lamborghini Murciélago, thank you.
In addition to taking up more space, those CNG tanks weigh a lot. At 2904 pounds, the GX is 204 pounds heavier than a similar base DX model. With 27 fewer horsepower—113—than the gasoline-powered car and the added weight of a body stuffed in the minuscule trunk, the GX is a slug. The last Civic sedan we tested with a gasoline-burning 1.8-liter did go from 0 to 60 in 7.7 seconds. Figure the greenie at right around 10 seconds with a brisk tailwind.
But the Civic GX is not about cargo carrying, and it’s certainly not about performance. It’s about compressed natural gas. Compressed to 3600 psi, the natural gas fueling the GX is served up in gallon gasoline equivalents (GGE)—the amount of CNG that holds as much energy as a gallon of gasoline. If your home is heated with natural gas, you pay by the CCF, which is 100 cubic feet of natural gas at 60 degrees Fahrenheit and 14.7 psi, also called a therm. Prices in California are currently 75 to 80 cents per therm. A GGE is about 1.25 therm and costs on average about $2.24 in the Golden State, or about $1.30 more per GGE than it would cost if we could refuel at home.
A Gas Station in Your Garage, but without the Stink of Gas or Mechanics
Aha! Home refueling is possible, for a price. For about $3500 (plus $1000 to $2000 for installation), CNG junkies can refuel natural-gas-powered vehicles at home. A Toronto-based company—Fuelmaker—sells a device called Phill that can be installed in the garage and will refuel CNG vehicles from the home’s natural-gas line. The catch is that Philling up a full tank takes much longer.
Refueling at a commercial station takes only a couple minutes longer than refueling a regular gasoline-powered car. Pumps use a slip-collar fitting that will be immediately familiar to anyone who has ever used an air compressor. It’s just bigger. Once the hose is locked onto the car’s fuel-fill nozzle, flipping a lever on the side of the collar starts the flow.
Phill, essentially an air compressor drawing natural gas instead of air and without a storage tank to compress air into, simply uses the fuel tank of the GX as its tank. It will take up to 20 hours to fill a completely empty fuel tank. An overnight fill (eight hours) will give owners enough fuel for about 100 miles of driving. Even on a full 3600-psi tank, the Civic GX will only make it about 250 miles.
How Far is Too Far to Recoup the Costs?
How Far Is Too Far to Recoup the Costs?
At $2.24 per GGE and the equivalent of 30.1 mpg—what we averaged on our drive—each of those miles costs only 7.3 cents, compared with 9.5 cents per mile (using current California prices) in a regular-gas-powered Civic LX getting the 33 mpg we recorded in our Sensible Shoes comparo [December 2006]. If saving 2.2 cents per mile doesn’t seem worth it to you, consider that, in addition, buyers in California are eligible for a $4000 federal tax credit for purchase of the Civic GX, bringing the premium paid for the vehicle down to, um, only $4780. At 2.2 cents saved per mile, it would take only 217,272 miles of driving to recoup that difference. If any vehicle is likely to survive that long, certainly a Honda Civic is a good candidate, although we know of no extreme long-term-reliability evaluations done on natural-gas-fueled cars.
During those 271,272 miles, the Civic GX will be eligible for a single-occupant HOV (carpool) lane permit, a priceless commodity on California’s gnarled freeways, as well as free parking at meters in L.A., Santa Monica, and San Jose. (If you can find an open meter, that is.)
Add in $5000 or so for Phill, subtract an additional $1000 tax credit for that purchase, and figure a saving of $2.21 per gallon—1 GGE is $0.94 (1.25 CCF at 75 cents per) versus $3.15 for a gallon of regular—and it would take 137,187 miles to regain that cost. Obviously, paying more than $8000 extra for a Civic is not a financially driven choice but an environmentally driven one. Countless polar bears may have already been saved by GX pilots, but countless is never enough when it could be more.
Comments