Honda Civic GX is a Natural Gas Runner

http://content.usatoday.com/communities/openroad/post/2009/04/65760005/1

Open Roader James R. Healey is in Orlando today for at the Alternative Fuels and Vehicles 2009 conference and reports that oil and natural-gas baron T. Boone Pickens predictss "$75 oil by the end of the year." He says oil suppliers will "cut and cut again" to reduce inventories and drive up prices. Oil's at about $48 a barrel today and gasoline's averaging about $2.06 a gallon. If he's is right and that math holds, $75 oil = gas in the low $3 range by yearend.

In case you've been on Mars for a year, Pickens is the natural gas evangelist buying ads touting it as the clean car fuel of the future. He makes no secret that he owns a ton of it and would get even richer, but his argument for hisPickens Plan is that America has a lot of it -- so we're not hostage to nations run by bad guys who hate us -- and it doesn’t cause much pollution.

More wisdom from T. Boone:

-- Oil will be $300 a barrel in 10 years if the U.S. doesn't find some other fuel. That'd be $12 gasoline.

-- It'll be 3-5 years before many pesonal cars run on natural gas. Honda's Civic GX is the only mainline showroom model now -- and try buying one, especially outside California. He drives one, loves it: "You get to drive single occupancy in the HOV lane, that's what I like." Honda civic GXpg-horizontal High Occupancy Vehicle express lanes normally require two or three occupants.

-- Money's key to the popularity of natural gas vehicles, just like most things. "There's a patriotic issue here," he says, but "how much will you pay for that?" His natural gas Civic was about $6,500 more than the similar gasoline model.

Photo of 2009 Honda Civic GX by Honda

Posted by Fred Meier