What reasons (other than special interest groups) prevent the U.S. from switching cars to run on natural gas?

Question

I saw a commercial by T. Boone Pickens stating Iran is switching cars to run on natural gas in order to be able to sell more of their oil for record profits. If the U.S. has considerable natural gas reserves right here at home, why aren't we switching in order to reduce our dependence on foreign oil?

Answer 1

why do people rap special interest groups...every on is in some...homeowners want lower taxes,,,parents want schools,,gun owners want no new laws..retired people want medical care and more  social security...oh to the Q..LPG is harder to handle...,,no stations [well very few]...price is going up fast...you still have to drill 4 it...refine it,,,ship it,,store it...and im not sure id want a tank like i have for my BBQ riding with me 24/7

Answer 2

would need to have as many natural gas filling stations as gasoline ones. The infrastructure isn't there...yet.

Also i saw the Honda green car and if you have a home filling station (if you have natural gas) it takes several hours or overnight to fill the tank in the car. The range on the the car is 300 miles at most.

If all cars were switched over to natural gas, think what that would to do home utility pricing.

Answer 3

Natural gases are harder to obtain. Either that or there's less of it. And people would rather use the prices of foreign oil than natural gases which is one thing I don't get.

Answer 4

US has other natural resources more readily available than Natural Gas ... not to mention a very large percentage of the world's automobiles to convert which would drive Natural Gas prices out of affordable range.  Home heating by Natural Gas would be in crisis.

I believe Hydrogen (fuel cells producing electricity) will be a better long-range choice.  In the mean-time, there are a lot of people thinking hard about how to handle the situation.

Answer 5

There are similar issues switching over to hydrogen.  We generally dont have the infrastructure in place.

Answer 6

Money.  Who is going to pay to convert the current cars,all the gas stations, and refineries?

Answer 7

The thing is we don't have more gas than oil.   We are importing a large part of our natural gas already from canada, and some liquefied gas from Algeria is coming into Maryland and Louisiana with 40 more import terminals in the planning stage and 8 of those likely to be built within a few years.   In some areas of the country, where they drill for it, its cheap but the same goes for where they refine oil.   The price of NG has trippled in the last few years in many places.