Natural gas touted as the next alternative fuel in San Diego
“I’m not proud of it, but I’m a reformed diesel guy,” said Andrew Douglas, senior VP of sales and marketing at Agility Fuel Systems of Santa Ana, California.
Douglas was among the dozens of attendees at the L-NGV2015 conference in San Diego last week, a gathering mostly aimed at the compressed natural gas (CNG) and liquefied natural gas (LNG) industry. Agility retrofits tractor-trailers to run on CNG, and has produced 25,000 such vehicles since it was founded in 1996.
More and more companies are converting to CNG: In the early years the customers were mostly city transit buses and garbage trucks, but the shipping sector is taking advantage of systems that can stash more fuel on board and propel the big trucks longer distances. On the company’s new Saddle Creek Gen 5 model, four cylinders of CNG totaling 160-gallon diesel equivalent are stacked up behind the driver’s cab. The setup weighs more than 3,000 pounds, but it can travel 750 to 850 miles without refueling.
But the industry has challenges: Douglas said the goal is to get 10 percent of the nation’s heavy-duty trucks running on natural gas by 2020. The cost of such vehicles is steep, although Agility says companies can make that money back within 2 years.
“Eighty years ago there was a transition to an alternative fuel going — diesel,” he told a conference room of about 40 people. The industry is seeing a migration to a “new alternative fuel,” natural gas. Just as decades ago, price is the motivator.
