I remember using taxis in Madrid (and I guess other large cities) in the 1970s which were powered by LNG. There is a lot going for LNG cars they have cleaner emissions and lower per-mile costs (or at least they were back then.)
There are problems though - if you retrofit your car for LNG then the yuge gas canister takes up half your boot/trunk space. Also for some safety reason the gas has to be able to vent and if your car is in an enclosed space this can be very bad. My mate blew up his garage like this.
tl;dr it's been a thing for years and never taken off
Interesting about the garage. Must have been faulty. What I was thinking is you get a large vehicle, maybe a bit of a gas guzzler and you retrofit because it would have space for the tank.
"Faulty" is what I thought too, but no. They are designed that way - I have no idea under what circumstance it needs to vent excess gas but it does. He had the car in his garage where there was also a freezer. When the thermostat clicked on the freezer a spark ignited the gas and ka-boom.
Incidentally petrol/gasoline vehicles are same. I recall seeing a neighbour's car spilling fuel from the filler cap on a freakish hot day. I was OMG OMG but the fire service kind of laughed at me and said well yeah they can do that.
Agree with you that if you can find a suitably large vehicle then the loss of internal space is not so bad.
Incidentally I forgot to mention that when you retrofit the LNG system to a car it is additional to the existing fuel system, not a replacement. This means extended range. My aforementioned mate used to love doing a demo to people where he was driving on the highway and the gasoline tank almost empty then he would flick a switch and the full LNG would kick in seamlessly. He was a bit of a nut that way actually and would drive 500 miles without stopping, just because he could.
I found out about them because I kept glancing at the taxi drivers empty fuel tank during a 3 hour trip. I was thinking surely he has to pull over at this next stop. They are cool having that flip option plus the savings.
I remember using taxis in Madrid (and I guess other large cities) in the 1970s which were powered by LNG. There is a lot going for LNG cars they have cleaner emissions and lower per-mile costs (or at least they were back then.)
There are problems though - if you retrofit your car for LNG then the yuge gas canister takes up half your boot/trunk space. Also for some safety reason the gas has to be able to vent and if your car is in an enclosed space this can be very bad. My mate blew up his garage like this.
tl;dr it's been a thing for years and never taken off
Interesting about the garage. Must have been faulty. What I was thinking is you get a large vehicle, maybe a bit of a gas guzzler and you retrofit because it would have space for the tank.
"Faulty" is what I thought too, but no. They are designed that way - I have no idea under what circumstance it needs to vent excess gas but it does. He had the car in his garage where there was also a freezer. When the thermostat clicked on the freezer a spark ignited the gas and ka-boom.
Incidentally petrol/gasoline vehicles are same. I recall seeing a neighbour's car spilling fuel from the filler cap on a freakish hot day. I was OMG OMG but the fire service kind of laughed at me and said well yeah they can do that.
Agree with you that if you can find a suitably large vehicle then the loss of internal space is not so bad.
Incidentally I forgot to mention that when you retrofit the LNG system to a car it is additional to the existing fuel system, not a replacement. This means extended range. My aforementioned mate used to love doing a demo to people where he was driving on the highway and the gasoline tank almost empty then he would flick a switch and the full LNG would kick in seamlessly. He was a bit of a nut that way actually and would drive 500 miles without stopping, just because he could.
I found out about them because I kept glancing at the taxi drivers empty fuel tank during a 3 hour trip. I was thinking surely he has to pull over at this next stop. They are cool having that flip option plus the savings.