Honda News: Honda Looking At Installing Natural Gas Pumps At Dealers

[William Maley]

William Maley

Editor/Reporter - CheersandGears.com

March 9, 2012

Honda is currently the only automaker to sell a passenger vehicle that can run on Natural Gas, the Civic Natural Gas. There's one problem; to buy a Civic Natural Gas, a dealer has to be within a twenty-mile radius of a Natural Gas station. Currently, 270 Honda dealers in the U.S. sell it.

Honda wants to change that. The company is currently looking at installing Natural Gas pumps at its dealers to help increase sales of the Civic Natural Gas.

“If the dealer had a fueling station, it would really reduce some of that concern for the customer,” said Steve Center, U.S. vice president for environmental business development at Honda.

Honda is currently in negotiations with regulators in California to have pumps placed at two or more Honda dealerships this year.

"It's not our place to create infrastructure, but it's a chicken-and-egg situation and we're going to have to nurse that egg along," said Center.

However, its still an idea. Center said details like the cost of a CNG station at a dealership, how many vehicles it could serve a day, and how many can be established are being looked at. Honda will work with the dealers to gain the necessary permits, provide financing, and will apply for public incentives.

“Something like this helps fill in holes. We want to select a couple of test cases and walk through it,” Center said.

Source: Bloomberg

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[G. David Felt]

Interesting, this will clearly gain traction now that GM is offering vehicles to sell that are CNG.

I wonder why the dealerships are not willing to sell a self fueling CNG install for your home. When one looks at the Natural Gas infastructure, you see millions of homes with Natural Gas. It only makes sense to offer CNG kits for the house just like Recharge kits.

About time we use a natural resource where we actually lead the world in amount available in the ground.

[Robert Hall]

Interesting..didn't realize Honda had an CNG car.

[Camino LS6]

I've been advocating a move like this for years, a big Cheers to Honda for pursuing the idea!

Well GM, how about it?

Chrysler?

Ford?

Let's do this.