Compressed Natural Gas car

[glatt]

I was in San Jose over the weekend attending my older brother's wedding. It was a great weekend, and I took a bunch of pictures at the ceremony, during side trips to the Redwoods and the beach with my family. But I won't bore you with those.

Instead, I'm going to bore you with pictures of his "new" car. I had mentioned this car in another thread a few weeks ago. He bought a used Honda Civic on E-Bay from a fleet operated in Pennsylvania. He had it trucked to him in California. The car runs on compressed natural gas. He had told me that it runs just like a regular car, and this weekend I got to find out if that's true. As it turns out, it pretty much is true.

The major downside to this car is that there are very few places where you can fill it up and it has a range of "only" 200 miles. Fortunately for him, one of those places in the bay area is literally right off an exit along the highway he uses for his commute. PG&E has a facility for their own fleet that they let the general public use.

So here's a picture of my brother and his car at the pump outside the PG&E building in the Mountain View area. Notice that green NGV sticker on the side? That's the main reason he bought it. He can use the HOV lanes in his area, even if he's in the car alone.

He's got a gas card that PG&E gave him, and the bills get sent to him automatically each month.

The gas cap is designed to have the fuel nozzle latch securely onto it. It's got to, at 3600 PSI pressure.