The big disadvantage with natural gas powered vehicles is clear: we already have millions of cars on the road that need gasoline, and something like 150,000 filling stations in the U.S. to serve them. That represents trillions of dollars of investment in gasoline power that can't be scrapped.
But if natural gas could be made into gasoline at a manageable cost, maybe that could work - we could have the advantages of natural gas and yet continue to use the huge system already existing in the U.S. and the rest of the world.
In 1979 a process was developed by Mobil in partnership with New Zealand to do just that. But one of the steps is apparently too expensive for the process to be commercially viable.
A small tech company may have a solution: "Primus Green Energy has built a pilot plant to perfect the technology of taking natural gas and converting it into gasoline. V.P. George Boyajian says Primus is close to finalizing a deal to build a commercial scale plant that will turn gas into gasoline (or diesel) for $2 a gallon."
I would love to see this happen.
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