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In response to customer requests, General Motors says it is going to launch versions of its full-size trucks and vans powered by compressed natural gas in approximately two years.
“A number of fleet operators want to present a green presence to the public,” Rick Spina, GM’s vehicle line executive for full-size trucks, told Automotive News. “They want to be known as green companies, especially those on the retail side.”
AT&T is one such company — the telecommunications firm reportedly just ordered 8000 Ford E-250 vans. GM still isn’t sure if it will perform the CNG conversion in-house, or subcontract it out to conversion specialist Roush Enterprises — similar to both Ford’s procedure and the one adopted by GM in the late 1990s for its CNG C/K pickups. Regardless, the automaker says the conversion requires minimal changes to the existing vehicle.
“We have to harden the valves, harden certain things for durability reasons,” said Spina. “But pretty much [a CNG engine] is a gasoline engine.” Other engineering factors also come into consideration on these vehicles — for instance, transmissions need to have their shift points recalibrated, as running an engine on CNG yields a different power curve.
Apart from the green image, fleets typically shop for CNG vehicles in a move to reduce costs. Although many companies incur the cost of installing their own CNG fueling station (helping negate the impact of a limited public CNG refueling infrastructure), the cost to power a vehicle on CNG is substantially less expensive than gasoline.
Source: Automotive News (Subscription Required)
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