
How would you like to drive in the carpool lane with only one person and also be able to buy fuel for your car at 80 cents a gallon? You can easily do this by driving your own natural gas fueled car.
I have my own Crown Victoria natural gas car, which gets about 22 miles to the gallon, and my daughter has a Honda Civic, which gets about 35 miles to the gallon. We have driven these for over 5 years and have not only saved a ton of money on gasoline but also a tremendous amount of time on the highway by being able to use the carpool lanes. At this time only natural gas cars and 100% electric cars can get carpool stickers. The hybrids are no longer allowed in the carpool lanes in California.
I also have a company that has 24 natural gas trucks and our own natural gas fueling station. Fuel for our natural gas compressor with the government subsidies is less that 50 cents a gallon, therefore we are saving over $100,000 a year in fuel costs of what diesel would cost us.
To compare the raw cost of natural gas with that of Gasoline per gallon take the cost from the above chart for crude oil and divide by 44* then multiply the cost of Natural gas by .125 and then you can compare. Also remember the Crude Oil has to be refined and transported mostly by truck (this adds about 15% to the cost) where Natural Gas does not have to be refined and is transported mostly by pipe line. Example Natural gas cost $3.85 Crude Oil cost $100.00 a barrel. $3.85 times .125 = $0.42 cost of natural gas $100/44 =$2.27 +15% +64.5¢= $3.25 cost of gasoline.
* 44 is the gallons of product produced by 1 barrel of oil. 64.5¢ is Federal & state tax.