How a billionaire fills gas tank for $1 a gallon

How a billionaire fills gas tank for $1 a gallon

edition.cnn.com

Long Beach, California (CNN) -- Gasoline at $4 a gallon is no worry for T. Boone Pickens, the billionaire energy investor from Texas. He drives from his home to his office in a car that runs on fuel costing less than $1 a gallon.

His method: He has a device that fuels his Honda Civic GX with natural gas from the pipes that serve his home. And he thinks there's a lesson there for America's energy woes.

Pickens, who is speaking Wednesday at the TED2012 Conference in Long Beach, California, said America needs to make natural gas a building block of a plan for ending oil imports from the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries.

Natural gas is "cheaper, it's cleaner, it's abundant and it's ours, and we're fools not to use it," Pickens said in an interview with CNN.

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Related AboveTopSecret.com Discussion Threads:
Schwan's delivery trucks run off of propane

We were just talking about natural gas cars in another thread (found in related thread link) and I stumbled upon this story (published just yesterday) which I think many U.S. citizens will find quite amazing. I was actually amazed myself to see that the OP in the other thread thought that the "Schwan's delivery trucks" were the "only vehicles on the planet that run off of propane". Is there some sort of cover up happening in the U.S. about this technology? As I informed the OP, we've had LPG (liquid propane gas) cars in use in Australia for quite a long time now, and roughly 80 to 90% of our fuel stations have LPG pumps. It is much cleaner and better for the environment than petroleum fuel. It is also much cheaper to run a car with LPG.

LPG costs a little more than half the price of petrol or diesel, but fuel economy will be about 20-25% lower. Overall running an LPG car costs approximately a third less than a petrol only car – but only once you've recovered the cost of the conversion.

Conversion of an existing petrol car so it can run on petrol or LPG costs between £1500 and £2500, so you'll need to travel around 14,000 miles a year to make the conversion worthwhile.

source

edition.cnn.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

Sorry to say, but your government is an epic fail. It's wasting so much time doing what's bad for the people. What do you even call them?

My grandfather and uncle worked for a propane gas company for years and both had tanks for propane in their vehicles to run them off of. They even got the gas for free, as best as I recall. They saved a lot of money.

Gas still has its problems, especially if you live in an area where fracking is taking place. By increasing the demand for gas it does increase the pressure for more fracking to take place. It is a tough one finding a responsible and sustainable solution to energy needs.

reply to post by ChaoticOrder


T. Boone Pickens doesn't have your best interest at heart... Simply put. Jesse Ventura has the real story. Watch.

LPG or liquid propane gas does have some inherent problems being heavier than Air. LPG tends to pool in gaseous puddles or lakes along floors and along the ground. If you park in an underground parking stall there is probably rules preventing LPG vehicles from parking there. Another problem is it does not flow properly in cold and in-climate weather conditions.Other than than it truly is a great fuel source....makes great hotdogs too!
brice

LPG is a good and useful alternative on the surface, but a little deeper and the problems arise.

LPG is very harsh on most motors, due to the uneven burn during ignition. Petrol burns from centre to edge, creating a better spark and power output, whereas LPG creates an uneven spark, resulting in harder wear overall on the engine. The difference is time of course, but installing LPG will eventually kill your car.

The main problem, at least in Aust is the cost. LPG has been around for around 25-30 years here, and back in 1986 my father had our first car and his truck installed with LPG. Back then it was around 6c a litre. In the early 90s it "jumped" to 13c a litre, and has been going up steadily ever since. The average price these days is around 60-70c a litre depending on location, a 100% increase in 25 years. I can't vouch for the US in the same regard, but in 1986 petrol here was around 35c a litre, and is now around $1.40 a litre.

LPG is a good and cleaner medium than petrol for sure, but it does come with drawbacks, and after all is done, it is still a non-renewable resource that, like petrol, will eventually run out, and also will eventually cost as much as petrol does now. What I can't believe is in Australia, a country with so much sugar cane, are we still relying on fossil fuels to power our cars....

reply to post by 74Templar

LPG is very harsh on most motors, due to the uneven burn during ignition. Petrol burns from centre to edge, creating a better spark and power output, whereas LPG creates an uneven spark, resulting in harder wear overall on the engine.

Wikipedia doesn't appear to agree with you on that, in fact it claims the exact opposite.

NGVs [natural gas vehicles] and especially CNG tends to corrode and wear the parts of an engine less rapidly than Gasoline. Thus its quite common to find NGV with diesel-engine like mileage, such as over 500,000 miles. Emissions are cleaner, there is generally less wasted fuel, and lower emissions of carbon and lower particulate emissions per equivalent distance traveled.

en.wikipedia.org...

it is still a non-renewable resource that, like petrol, will eventually run out, and also will eventually cost as much as petrol does now.

That is a good point. But it is still a better option than petrol.

reply to post by 74Templar


That is not true ,I have been running LPG cars for a long time as have most taxi's and i can tell you that 800,000 plus kilometres from an engine is normal in a well maintained engine ,also when the oil is changed it will come out cleaner than a car using petrol.Petrol has the problem of washing away oil from the cylinder lining thus causing wear.

reply to post by kwakakev

Originally posted by kwakakev
Gas still has its problems, especially if you live in an area where fracking is taking place. By increasing the demand for gas it does increase the pressure for more fracking to take place.

And when an increased demand for oil occurs things like the deepwater disaster happen.

reply to post by brice

LPG or liquid propane gas does have some inherent problems being heavier than Air. LPG tends to pool in gaseous puddles or lakes along floors and along the ground.

Petrol is also heavier than air and IF the tank has a leak it will tend to form "puddles or lakes along floors and along the ground". Put a spark near that puddle and the exact same thing will happen. Not to mention, CNG is actually lighter than air and floats away.

reply to post by ChaoticOrder


I guess Wikipedia hasn't stripped and rebuilt as many LPG engines as me then....

If you read properly, "in the long run" LPG run cars have more damage to the cylinders and the head. I could go into all kinds of technical jargon, and while newer, more modern engines are being designed with alternate fuels in mind for longevity nowadays than in the past, any engine I have stripped has had more damage done to those parts in particular than a petrol engine with the same mileage. As for taxis and other high mileage vehicles, most are fitted with oil injection systems that make the LPG run smoother on engines. My dad swore by our Morey's and it has been in every LPG car since.

Besides, I do agree with you, LPG is cleaner, better for the environment, and besides, when was the last time you saw a country invaded for their LPG supplies??? I'm actually glad to see other countries, particularly the US looking into the option. Ten years ago many people I knew there saw LPG as a joke, while us backward hicks in "Austria" were embracing it in droves. End of the day I'd rather pay 60c a litre and have to do more work on my car than pay $1.40 a litre for petrol and wonder just how much blood is in it...

reply to post by 74Templar

i am not sure of this oil injection system you speak of as most LPG vehicles are converted to LPG after being released as a petrol engine,except for some dual fuel models with factory fitted gas.Why the need to strip down so many lpg engines ?,because if you are maintaining them the engine will generally outlast the rest of the car unless you get head gasket problems ,Once again usually from lack of maintenance and if you use quality oil the need for additives is not required.Not buying it

reply to post by 12voltz


Most of the engines I've rebuilt, over many, many years have had carbon build up on top of the pistons and in the top of the valves in the head. Granted petrol does this also, I've just always found from personal experience that LPG running engines have this damage done to them. It's not a big deal, I'm not saying that LPG engines are hammered into non-existance like petrol motors, just my personal experience with rebuilding engines over the years. But hey, what would someone who has mechanics for both father and brother know compared to the internet right??

To be honest I haven't rebuilt a LPG motor for about 10 years, so maybe, as I also said, the technology has improved dramatically, as have the fuels with it.

Oh, and the Morey's oil injection system has been around almost as long as LPG systems have. Look it up.

And they still burn it off. Natural gas has value, no? So why do they continue to burn it off? But no, they keep burning off natural gas, wasting our resources, and raising the price of gas ..cuz you know ...we're in yet another war with an oil producing country. So who trained these guys as to how to do business? Rape, pillage, call it your own? Musta been Viking Method To Take Over The Known World 101. Too bad they are following an ancient paradigm. How 'bout 2012? What now? Doesn't anyone see the need for a new model??? or is that the PTB are so ingrained they are blinded and thus we all run off the cliff.

The Dallas Morning News had CNG powered trucks running papers to outlying towns as well as to delivery districts In Dallas and the suburbs in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex from the late 50s until about 1983... They ran for all of those years until the trucks looked as if they would fall apart then they were replaced with Mercedes Benz trucks.... The old CNG trucks would hardly run when it was very cold but they still managed to get the papers out to the delivery contractors.

reply to post by kwakakev


I think hybrids work well for a stop-gap solution. Even better are smaller, lighter diesel cars with manual transmissions.

I don't see LPG ever taking off due to that 20-25% drop in fuel economy.

Sorry, T.Boone but your idea is half-baked in the long-term.

The only reason we haven't seen Natural Gas vehicles in the USA is clear:
BIG OIL.

You think these lobbyists are going to let someone or something come in their way?
Especially knowing that if we switched to a cheaper fuel, they would lose billions?


Realistically speaking, propane engines have been around for a long time.
They are used on city buses in major metropolitan areas in this day and age.
There's no huge advertising for the change to consumer vehicles because gasoline = profits.
And the market on LPG is so low, with such a huge supply, that profits would be nil.

So of course we should try and get more vehicles to convert.
It would be cleaner, and it would keep many mechanics in work or create new jobs.

But...if Big Oil gets its way, this won't happen until oil hits $200-$300 a bbl.

Only then, would people finally "get it".

reply to post by havok


Nope, Big Oil is behind some of the initiatives to run different fuel systems.

CALSTART is a good organization to follow.

Things happen in the private sector first, because consumers in the US are a finicky bunch, and they are not big on buying into different technologies. Making a lot of them not economically viable.