2008 honda civic gx
The 2008 Honda Civic GX is powered by natural gas, which presents drivers with a unique refueling experience.


When gasoline hit $4 a gallon, things changed. Hybrids skyrocketed in popularity while sales of trucks and SUVs dropped like ... well ... the guzzling hunks of iron they are. But desperate times call for desperate measures, so why get a hybrid that averages a measly 45 mpg when you can buy a car that gets much more?

Although it's been on the market for a while now and you'd think any company offering such a machine could easily sell a million of 'em, actual sales haven't quite reached that yet. In fact, at the current rate, they won't for another 1,000 years.

The car in question is Honda's Civic GX, perhaps the best-kept alternative fuel secret in the country. But as you might have guessed, there's a reason few people have heard of it--and even fewer have bought one.

Although the Civic GX looks like a normal Civic, it runs on natural gas instead of gasoline. While natural gas is a common commodity, it's not commonly offered at your corner filling station. In most parts of the country, it's piped underground to homes and buildings to burn for heat, and unlike gasoline, which is a liquid, natural gas is a gas--just like the air we breathe, but more volatile. Much closer, in fact, to hydrogen.

Just as hybrids weren't very popular when gas was $1.50 a gallon--which was just five years ago--natural gas didn't look like such a bargain then, either. As a result, there was little incentive to build cars that ran on the stuff, and likewise little reason for filling stations to offer it.

Today, however, it's a different story. So we drove to Detroit (where there are about a half-dozen natural-gas filling stations in the area) to experience the thrill of driving without using a drop of gasoline.

Okay, perhaps "thrill" isn't quite the right word. With 20 percent less power than the Civic LX on which it's based--and about 150 lbs more weight--the GX accelerates a bit more slowly, most noticeably in highway passing maneuvers. Occasionally at idle or at creeping speed, a quiet, solitary "tick" would emanate from somewhere in the back of the car (perhaps from a pressure regulator), but it couldn't be heard with either the fan or radio in use. A large pressure tank replaces the normal fuel tank, and its position behind the rear seat not only deletes the folding seatback, but takes up half the normal trunk volume as well. Otherwise, it's just like driving a normal Civic. Until you have to fill it up.

 

2008 honda civic gx
Trunk space is cut in half by a large, pressurized, natural-gas fuel tank. The folding rear seatback is sacrificed as well.
 

Since the driving range of a Civic GX is estimated by the EPA at 187-281 miles, you'll have to do that more often--and this is one car in which you REALLY don't want to run out of gas. Most of the 115.7 miles we traveled in the GX were at highway speeds, but there was some city driving and a bit of rush-hour stop-and-go. When we stopped to fill it, the gas gauge indicated the tank was half empty, so the estimated 187-281 mile range seems about right.

Though filling the GX is a bit intimidating at first (we couldn't do it without running the old newsreel footage of the Hindenburg through our mental projector), it really isn't much more difficult than filling a car with gasoline, and doesn't take much longer, either (see next page).

 

2008 honda civic gx
Once acclimated to the procedure, a fill takes about as long as with gasoline.

Natural Gas vs. Gasoline--Which Costs Less Per Mile?

So now the burning question: What kind of mpg did we get?

Well, that depends. Natural gas isn't measured by the gallon, though the meters on the pump tried to do so with "gasoline equivalent" numbers. One said we used the equivalent of 3.328 gallons, but at a "price per gasoline gallon equivalent" of $1.95 per gallon. The EPA does something similar. Its fuel-economy ratings for the GX are nearly identical to those for a Civic LX with automatic transmission--24 city, 36 highway--but the EPA calculates that by comparing it to gasoline priced at $1.65 per gallon. Not sure if you've noticed, but gasoline doesn't cost $1.65 a gallon.

So the only way to compare "fuel economy" is to calculate cost per mile. For example, Consumer Guide averaged 28.5 mpg on a Civic LX with automatic. With gasoline at $4.00 per gallon, that equals about 14 cents per mile. By contrast, we drove 115.7 miles in our test GX, and the cost to fill it was only $6.49--or about 5.6 cents per mile. Thus, with gas at $4.00 per gallon, we got the cost equivalent of 71.3 mpg on our test GX. If the price of gasoline were at $3.00 per gallon, the GX would have gotten the cost equivalent of 53.5 mpg. At $5.00 per gallon, it would cost the same per mile as a gasoline-powered car getting 89 mpg. Therefore, assuming the price of natural gas stays the same, the higher the price of gasoline, the better the GX's cost-equivalent mpg.

Despite these impressive figures, the GX is certainly not the answer for everyone. First of all, it lists for $24,590. That's a $6,830 increase over the LX on which it's based, all going to the natural gas conversion hardware. However, the federal government currently offers a $4,000 tax credit on the car, and some municipalities offer additional incentives, so the end result isn't as staggering as the list price suggests.

But then you have to find a place to fill it. Most GXs are currently purchased in California and New York, which host the most stations. They're also sold in 29 other states, though not by every Honda dealer. Buyers can purchase a home-refueling station called PHILL, but that runs about another $4,300-$5,200 after the $1,000 federal tax credit. Nobody said saving money was going to be cheap.

In many ways, however, natural gas makes a lot of sense as an "alternative" fuel. Fairly large quantities can be produced domestically, which prevents American dollars from going overseas. Its infrastructure is already in place, and it's piped underground rather than having to be shipped from location to location in diesel-burning trucks. Higher demand would undoubtedly raise prices, but they'd have to increase substantially to match the skyrocketing cost of gasoline.

Many alternatives to gasoline weren't attractive when the stuff was flowing at $1.50 a gallon. But as that price doubles and even triples, running a car on natural gas can save a lot of dollars--and make a lot of sense.

09.25.2008