It's like a second Christmas.
Mike, or Dr. Drain, as his business card identifies him, showed up at noon Thursday to rough-in the mounts and run the gas line for the Phill natural gas fueling unit we're installing in my garage.
If you drive a Civic GX, the home unit would seem to be a reasonable thing to lust after.
Without it, you stop every 175-200 miles to fill up, and natural gas stations aren't quite as plentiful as the regular kind.
For me, with a 116-mile round trip commute, that 's meant a stop every other day at least.
There happen to be five natural gas pump locations on my route -- Southern Caliofrnia along the 405 Freeway corridor from Santa Monica to Orange County apparently is a pretty gassy place -- but using them requires detours off the freeway and delays my arrivals at home or office.
With the Phill, I'll be able to hook up the hose when I pull into the garage at night and, presuming it works as advertised, Viola!, I'll have a topped-up tank every morning when I leave for work.
We started ordering the Phill from its Canadian manufacturer, FuelMaker Corp., back in November. (I'm using the plural because getting the Phill has been a joint effort , with Edmunds paying for it and me providing the location and doing all the ordering and scheduling to get it installed.)
After telling them by phone that we wanted one, they sent us to a website to download a form we filled out and faxed to the local natural gas utility, which had to certify that we had the proper type of gas service at the hous. That took about a week.
Then we had to contact Dr. Drain -- the only installer FuelMaker has authorized in our part of Southern California -- and set up an appointment for him to come scope out the garage. We also sent him a bunch of photos of the inside of the garage to help him give us his installation estimate ($1,800).
After he notified FuelMaker that he was good to go, customer service agent Patricia Mwita nicely asked us to send the full price of the Phill unit in advance-- less a $2,000 discount we got because we're installing it in an area in which the local auir quality agency gives two grand grants to Phill purchasers. The total rounds out to $2,200.
Add the installation fee and we'll be at $4,000, but there's a also a $1,000 federal income tax credit (which Edmunds gets, darnit!) which brings the out-of-pocket back down to around $3,000.
At a roughly 60-cents per gallon-equivalent difference between the price of home-brew and retail CNG, it will take 4,615 gallons to break even with the Phill. That's 129,000 miles at the 28 miles per gallon we've been averaging, so we'll probably not have the thing amortized when time comes to sell the longerm Civic GX.
But there's a market for used Phills, which often are sold along with the car they've been filling. So we may break even.
And if I were paying for it out of my own pocket, there'd be another rationale for the expense: the extra 10 minutes the home fill will give me for a little more sleep in the mornings, or to savor a glass of wine and a little conversation with my wife in the evenings.
Plus, I have to clean out the garage, 'cause all the junk – kayak, ladder, bike rack, dart board etc. – takes up wall space the Phill will need. A clean garage will make my wife happy and that, as the commercial says, is priceless.
But back to business.
Patricia says FuelMaker is assembling our Phill right now and will ship it to Dr. Drain in early February. He says he can install it within a few days.
We’ll keep you posted.
John O’Dell, Senior Editor, Green Car Advisor @ 8,470 miles.
langjie says:
02:57 PM, 01/11/08
that sounds pretty cool. I assume if Edmunds decided to get another CNG vehicle, the Phill would work for that as well, so think of it more of an investment than anything
benson2175 says:
03:04 PM, 01/11/08
That is pretty cool to be able to fill... sorry phill up at home. Wouldn't work for someone living in an apartment building tho.
chevy598 says:
04:49 PM, 01/11/08
What a waste of a natural resource. We need that CNG to heat our homes. There is far less known reserves of CNG than that of oil, and to waste it on cars is a sin.
20 years from now will be addicted to foreign CNG.
altimadude00 says:
05:02 PM, 01/11/08
CNG is not a precious resource. Just stand outside a Taco Bell and you'd get plenty of compressed natural gas.
However, with all sincerity, school and city busses have been running with CNG for years. It is not a waste of resources. Bravo to Edmunds on hopping in this niche green market.
rick8365 says:
05:22 PM, 01/11/08
Good stuff
I'd also like to see home fueling units for diesels that would run on veggie oil. Like a home heating oil delivery, a truck would pull up in front of your house and fill your storage tank - then you fill your car. I know it's not that easy - straight veg oil etc. but I like the concept.
(of course the delivery truck would either be running on veg oil or CNG)
chevy598 says:
06:13 PM, 01/11/08
I just read an extremely boring article about NG reserves. The earth has 6000 trillion cubic feet of proven reserves. In 2006 worldwide usage was 100 tcf, by 2030 worldwide usage will be 190 tcf per year. At 190 that’s only 31 years worth of NG!!!!
The big kicker is 2000tcf of those reserves are too small for gas companies to invest in. The first fossil fuel the human race is going to run out of is NG.
I’ll find the link and post it when I get home.
chevy598 says:
06:40 PM, 01/11/08
Every year more buses/delivery vehicles are converted to CNG, and every year it costs more to heat our homes. We are already pushing the supply chain to the max in the winter.
mohaji says:
11:10 PM, 01/12/08
chevy598,
re: natural gas/home heating cost worry.
think of it this way. if natural gas cost more, more gas companies will enter market, and more will be produced thus offsetting price increase. :)
and last time I heard, canada has some bi*ching amount of natural gas hidden in snows up north, so don't worry about running out of natural gas before oil does.
stephen987 says:
01:19 AM, 01/13/08
CNG is a nice diversion, but except for fleet uses where the private refueling system is actually cost-effective, it's never going to be as good a choice as biodiesel.
bepperb says:
12:40 PM, 01/16/08
NG is often off-gassed or purposely left underground by oil companies, it's hardly a scarce resource. Also, proven reserves and actual reserves are not the same thing, and as supply decreases more exploration will likely yield more reserves of the gas.
My main gripe is with the fuelmaker corp. Can they make this any more difficult? Frigidaire didn't make my plumber fax them paperwork before I could have a NG stove in my kitchen. And the cost is too high. As great an idea as this is, it won't catch on due to these drawbacks. Still, I look forward to reading more. I would be all over a used NG civic with Phill combo.
Don't NG cars get carpool lane access in CA? I would think that is a huge unmentioned benifit.
winky1 says:
03:07 PM, 02/22/08
I bought my GX in late 2004. Shortly afterwards, I was in frequest contact with Fuelmaker to try to get the Phill. Just before the release, Fuelmaker kept saying the expected cost would be between $1,500 and $2,000. As soon as the government got involved with its handouts, the price of the Phill goes up to $4,000. Imagine that, the difference in price was the amount the goverment was subsidizing...And to make matters worse, by the time I got around to trying to order it, I had to complete the SOCAL Gas form, so they could check the quality of my gas. According to SOCAL Gas, the quality of my gas doesn't meet the standards of the AQMD, so I cannot even get the Phill. Don't you just love it when the govenment takes care of us!