General Motors to offer factory LPG full-size vans

[Leslie Judson Jones]

http://green.autoblog.com/2010/05/19/ge ... size-vans/

 

[Walt]

Do you have to pay the road tax with that?

 

[Doug Cox]

I'm not sure I'm clear to what you are inferring. lol

 

[Lee Stockwell]

Cool! I'd support that. Keeping fuel dollars circulating nearer home will help our economy. I have natural gas at the shop, and if CNG compressors became affordable it would be an option.

Of course NG costs are unstable and are at the whim of local utilities.

 

[Dolly Llama]

How's the cost compared to gas??

I hear propane doesn't go as far pr gal
(same for natural gas)

I don't know what propane sells for or if it's prone to jump in price like gas
But it would be interesting to see the price break down calculated at dollar pr miles ratio.

example, if gas is $4 pr gal @15 mpg would be roughly 26 cents pr mile cost
If propane was $2 pr gal @ 7 mpg gas would be slightly less


you'd "think" if it was really a competitive option, we'd see more of it and natgas .
Instead, they only folks using it, or thinking about using it are the ones sucking on the gov tit by receiving gubmint cheese subsidies to convert and use


..l.T.A.

 

[Mike Draper]

natural gas loses 33% efficiency. Its complicated and expensive to have a house fulling station be because of the pressures that it has to be filled at. Before obama the impostor was elected by his union thugs and brothers (some of whom voted for him 70+ times) natural gas in Utah was .63 a gallon. Now its 1.23 a gallon. The bastard shut down half our nat gas wells on his 2nd day in office so we could me more dependent on the countries that hate us. Propane prices do fluctuate just as most commodities do. But not as radical as gas does. Propane will go up in price in the winter and down in the summer. In the winter here it will be 2.10 a gallon and 1.45 a gallon in the summer. Sorry about the obama rant, he can eat shit!

 

[Leslie Judson Jones]

Do you have to pay the road tax with that?

Walt,

There is no road tax when you fill your own tanks. I see guys on this board posting that they used to own an LP system and it was a pain in the ass to try to find fuel. This is true in some cases. If you have an LP system and you do not have a facility close by to fill from, it can be a very big pain in the ass. When someone buys a Judson machine, this is one of the issues we have always addressed with our customers. That might be why Judson customers don’t say it is a big pain in the ass to get propane. Your local propane supplier will put the bottle at your facility at no cost. You simply keep your tanks full at all times. The propane company will arrive once per month and top the tank off. All you pay for is what they add to the tank. With the additional savings of no road tax, I think it is about 75 cents per gallon.

With the new Chevrolet factory propane van and a TNT running a Kohler 25 hp propane engine and heating the water with a #4 Little Giant heater, your total fuel consumption while cleaning carpets will be 1.3 to 1.6 gph, sustaining 240 on a high flow wand. When running a combustion engine on propane, the life of the engine is extended considerably. This will be good for the van and the carpet cleaning unit. Propane extends the life of the engine because there is hardly any carbon in the oil, breaking the oil down.

 

[Walt]

Thanks Les,

That's a very inticing option. Public use tax for roads is .24 per gallon on top of other taxes in Oregon. I assume other states have it as well.

 

[tmdry]

It's good that someone (GM) is catching up to what "other's" are doing. Since most other countries have been offering CNG and other fuel sources to consumers for decades now. Even though this is only for the cargo vans, it may help some companies out there who have access to cng locally or can install one of those tanks in their backyard.

10-15 years ago, the local gas company here had (they still do) over 15 CNG filling stations opened to the public. All within 1-5 miles from each other, now they are all closed for the "public" however the govt uses for their public transportation and puts large wraps on their buses to let consumers know they're saving mother earth. In the DC area, they also have CNG Civics running around, hundreds of them. The only "public" gas station that has CNG in an industrial pump charges as much as regular gas and it's also in that area. We're not so lucky around here, just the govt 'course.



:roll:

 

[steve g]

Do you have to pay the road tax with that?

no if noone knows seriously I have NO DOUBT you are supposed to pay somehow, this would be no different than having a big tank and having red diesel in it. I have heard propane loses about 30% of engine power or gasoline, this could be worse and compounded by high altitude.

 

[rwcarpet]

I'm sure that by the time these hit the market, there will be a way for the Gov to hit you up with a road tax, whether it's when you buy the fuel, or when you file your taxes every year, or even tacked onto the purchase price like the "gas guzzler tax".

They will find a way......