| Propane Power Is Cheap, Ready Now Was I brainwashed by a pair of Roush executives during a recent visit to their headquarters in Livonia, Mich. Aside from the conversion cost, it's different, and a user has to have a fuel source. Price varies with locales, and might be more volatile than for natural gas. As for safety, a few days after visiting Roush I attended a Cummins event where an engineer disagreed with my casual description of a propane vehicle's tank as "a big barbeque bottle. "No!" he barked. Then release it, and after two or three seconds, the engine starts. Pop the transmission lever into D and drive away. Autogas is sold with road taxes attached and is best obtained in bulk. That's a small fraction of a fleet-size natural gas facility; prices rely upon storage and pumping capacity, but I've seen figures of $900,000 for CNG to $4. The tank and its pump might cost $10,000 for a fleet to obtain, Mouw said. 99 a gallon for a recent replenishing. Until recent years Cummins made and sold propane-fuel engines, but the market dwindled and the builder has instead embraced natural gas with certain products, such as the ISL-G medium/heavy-duty engine. In extreme cases, tanks can and have exploded. 50 to $2 per gallon less than gasoline or diesel, and is sold at 3,000 locations in the United States. That's many more than natural gas, which many Americans believe is the fuel of the future. The engine's electronic controls were modified to consume propane, which has an octane rating of 105 instead of regular gasoline's 87, he explained. 5 mpg on propane. But propane's cheaper, so the total fuel cost is still considerably less. At the Roush filling station, Carney showed me how the Ford's tank is topped off. There's a faint pop as you pull off the nozzle and you might get a whiff of the gas. Then you trigger it, and the tank fills in a few minutes. Users of propane-fueled vehicles don't tank up at places that fill barbeque bottles, but at outlets that sell "autogas," which is what propane's called elsewhere in the world. are equipped to burn autogas, and it's Mouw and Carney's mission to boost that number. And as everybody and his brother knows, we're seeing a drilling boom in several states. It typically costs $1. Propane burns cleaner than gasoline so emits fewer pollutants, and there are stories of engines running twice as long as usual because its cylinders stay clean. Its 5-speed automatic transmission shifted just like it's supposed to, because it had no idea what the engine was burning. 4-liter V-8 was smooth and gutsy, and ran like it was using gasoline. Roush makes no claims about engine life, but does note that some users extend drain intervals because crankcase oil stays clean, too. My drive over Livonia's sometimes rough concrete streets had me contending with the empty F-250's stiff ride, which I expected from a 3/4-ton's suspension. Unlike old dual-fuel systems-and recently announced products for Ford, General Motors and Ram pickups, which burn both gasoline and natural gas-the Roush system uses only propane. Its cloth-covered seats were comfortably contoured, and all gauges and controls were easy to use. This truck had the basic XL trim with a vinyl floor that shrugs off mud and such. Only about 100,000 vehicles in the U. That's why the Roush F-250 and other demonstration vehicles exist. Years before, the company's founder, Jack Roush, worked as a Ford engineer. Installation of the systems is done by Roush technicians at its own facilities and by authorized upfitters such as Knapheide and Adrian Steel. Propane is safer than gasoline if there's a leak because it speedily evaporates and dissipates, he said. Propane is also called liquefied petroleum gas because it historically was produced as a byproduct of oil refining. |
Thursday, 3 May 2012
Propane Power Is Cheap, Ready Now
