Natural Gas powered vehicles, do they get good gas mileage?

Question

Does anybody have one?

If so, what kind of mileage does it get?

I am interesting in the super duty ford truck with the bi-fuel system but I have heard when it is running on the natural gas it gets half the mileage it does when running on gasoline. Anybody know for sure?

Answer 1

Yes, regular gas engines running on natural gas will only get about 50 percent fuel mileage versus running on gasoline. When they first started converting car engines to natural gas the cost of natural gas was about a third the price of regular gas. So even though you were using twice as much fuel you were still saving money. Now I think natural gas is about 50 to 65% the price of fuel so the savings isn't quite there.

Natural gas is still a good source of fuel for cars but the engine needs to be build for it. If the engine is set up for it right it will do a lot better as far as getting higher fuel mileage. From what I understand a proper setup for natural gas will get anywhere from 70 to 90% fuel mileage of a gas engine. It will also make more power.

Some other benefits to running natural gas is oil change intervals can be doubled and the spark plugs will last a long, long time. So you can save more money by having to pass less for maintanence.

Answer 2

The answer is no, because bio-fuels are alcohols and petroleum fuels are alkanes. Basically bio-fuels have less potential energy. So the only plus is that your using food as a fuel.