Orange County Choppers for the Natural Gas Motorheads out there

June 2, 2009 by Dan Gibson · 2 Comments, leave one of your own
Filed under: Natural Gas

How did I miss this one? Apparently Orange County Choppers and Chesapeake Energy worked together to create the first Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) powered chopper. According to the video embedded below they have been working on the bike the past couple of months. The show dedicated to the construction of the bike is scheduled to air soon and they expect an audience of about nine million viewers.

Full disclosure. I’m not a bike person. The last time I was on any type of bike, it was a bike-cycle years ago when I was teaching my sons how to ride. Luckily, we found an area with no witnesses and they both turned into excellent bicyclists in spite of my instruction.

Still, it’s great to see natural gas used in this sort of way. We all know the benefits of natural gas as a transportation fuel but some believe the benefits should be directed toward larger fleets. While others make the argument that the benefits can be seen across all vehicles (and I guess that now includes choppers). Check out the Natural Gas Vehicles for America web site for lots more information on the subject.

Here’s another photo of the chopper.

I’m going to put in a call to Chesapeake to see if i can get some more information on the bike before the show airs. Bruce Kauffmann and Chris McGill, contributors to this blog, are both big motorcycle guys and immediately began pelting me with questions, including how much range would a bike running on CNG have. Motorcycles, because of their smaller gas tanks, obviously don’t have the same range as cars. That challenge would be magnified in a CNG chopper.

Chris actually took four weeks last summer and traveled 5,000+ miles on his bike visiting member companies and the media talking about natural gas. We did a story in the November issue of American Gas Magazine that’s a great read. Here’s a link to the pdf of Chris’s trip. It’s a decent size file so it might take a moment to download.

If you have any questions on the bike, leave them in the comments below and I’ll see what I can get out of the guy from Chesapeake when I speak with him.

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2 Comments on Orange County Choppers for the Natural Gas Motorheads out there

Taylor Shinn on Fri, 12th Jun 2009 3:19 pm

Dan – We would love to fill you in on all of the details about the Chopper, OCC, and the airing on American Chopper. Send me an email with your phone number and I’ll call you. taylor.shinn@chk.com.

We are excited to continue to show America that natural gas truly is an clean American energy answer.

Taylor

Dan on Mon, 15th Jun 2009 8:18 am