• Date: Friday, November 11^th
• Time: 9:15 AM PT / 12:15 PM ET
• Registration Link: Click here to sign up

They are going to cover policy, new technology development, and business strategy, as it relates to the alternative fuel vehicle industry. The end of the session will be an extended question and answer session.

As you get ready for the session, you can pop over to drivenaturalgas.org to read more about natural gas vehicles and the Drive Natural Gas Initiative. Drive Natural Gas is a collaboration between more than 50 producers and distributors of natural gas to promote the development of natural gas vehicles and infrastructure throughout North America.

People are doing all sorts of conversions/creations. We’ve featured a GTO, a Hummer, a Tahoe, even a natural gas motorcycle from the guys from Orange County Choppers. That one was especially popular with the Harley guys around the office.

So I thought, “yeah, a roadster, why not?” The roadster certainly didn’t disappoint.

From the article:

Conceived in 2008, a scale model was built to determine proportional relationships, and placement of the advanced extruded alloy core, composite wrapped, compressed natural gas storage tanks. Incorporation of the greater volume of storage mandated by a gaseous fuel into the overall design of the body was paramount. A first in automobile design and construction, the Magnolia Special was from inception, a dedicated compressed natural gas vehicle.

They have a ton of pictures to go with the rest of the story.

They stopped in town today to show off their ride to Senator Casey. Dick Snodgrass, who has been helping them promote their trip, invited me down to snap a few photos. You can see those at the bottom of this post.

I don’t think I’ve seen a vehicle quite like it. They did an excellent job on the graphics. The vehicle definitely stands out as you’re going down the road.

Senator Casey seemed impressed by the vehicle as well. Murry and Cindy had quite few stories for him about their trip. They went into a lot of detail about the tanks, the fueling stations, the savings they saw using natural gas instead of gasoline, and even the range of the vehicle (in the 500 mile range for the engineers reading this).

What struck me about the Gerbers though was when they started to talk about why they were doing this. Why they decided to leave their children (with a great sitter, of course) for 15 or so days to drive across the country in a natural gas vehicle.

They financed the journey out of their own pocket. No corporate sponsor. They wanted to touch upon that American spirit of innovation. They purposely chose a hummer because it’s viewed by so many as a “dirty” vehicle. Yet, their hummer is EPA certificated to have fewer emissions than a Smart Car.

Cindy said that by the time they are done, they will have talked with thousands of school children. You see, at many places along their trip, the Gerbers stopped at middle or high schools to tell the young people their about their adventure. They left grants at those schools to be used by their science departments.

Cindy said their message was very simple. There are energy problems that this country needs to solve and it will be their job to do it. Many years ago, people thought it would be crazy to drive a car across country. Now we think nothing of it. With time, passion and innovation, some of these children might be able to solve our energy concerns in the future.

If you’re out and about, the Gerbers will be attending a press conference with Congressmen Murphy and Altmire at the House Triangle this afternoon. The Hummer will be on display in the Garfield Circle until around six this evening.

If you’re looking for more information on the Gerber’s journey, you can follow them on twitter at GoNatGas or check out their photos on their Facebook page.

The fueling station cost approximately $500,000. Clean Cities covered about a quarter of the cost from a $15 million federal stimulus grant. Next up for Clean Cities and Questar is making Utah’s I-80 corridor more NGV-friendly by extending it into Nevada and Wyoming.

Thanks to Paula and Jim Grambihler at Questar for pointing me to the story. You can get the full read over at the Salt Lake Tribune.

A key takeaway from the article is that while Alagasco is expanding its natural gas fleet, they are also planning to build nine fueling stations across its service territory in Alabama over the next 2½ years. The refueling infrastructure has always been one of the key issues with natural gas vehicles, so this is good news. Two of the refueling stations are scheduled for completion by year’s end. The costs involved in the building of a station range from $400,000 for smaller stations to more than $1 million for those able to handle larger fleets.

Bob Strickland, Alagasco’s manager of clean transportation, said Alagasco is teaming with municipalities and private parties interested in adding to their fleets of CNG vehicles or in building natural gas fueling stations. Bob also chairs the Southeastern States NGV Corridor Committee, a coalition working to build a network of CNG fueling stations across the Southeast.

Bob also has a great quote in the story: “There are more than 10 million natural gas vehicles worldwide, but only about 120,000 in the U.S. What is interesting is that many of the foreign countries that sell us oil are running their vehicles on natural gas because they want to sell their oil to us instead of using it themselves.”

That is interesting, indeed.

Thanks to Paula for sending over this great story from the Birmingham News. There’s more there and it’s worth a read.

Nick Stavropoulos from National Grid was scheduled to give the welcome for the event but was also scheduled to do an interview with C-Span (see Chris’s post from yesterday). What to do? Well, how bout a nice video introduction from Nick that will play this morning. You can watch the embedded video below if you weren’t able to attend.




The summit, being held in Boston, started yesterday and continues through the 14th. They have a wide range of programs examining the benefits of natural gas vehicles. A sampling of the sessions includes:

• Can Washington Embrace Revolution? A Candid Look at the Mood and Mayhem on Capitol Hill
• Detroit’s Re-Engagement: Implications for the Light-Duty OEM Market
• Striking a Balance: EPA’s Proposed Streamlining of Aftermarket Conversion/Retrofit Rules
• The Communications Revolution: Should We Twitter? Do We Blog?
• Capitalizing on the MDV/HDV Opportunity: Assuring OEMs’ Success and Continued Investment
• Global NGV Snapshot: The Rapid Growth of NGVs Around the World
• The Grass Roots Revolution: Fostering Collaboration at the Local and State Level

You can download a full conference program over at the site. If you’re at the summit, leave us a comment below on how it’s going. I’ll be checking out twitter to catch what I can.

• Money will be distributed by the state to develop a CNG fueling facility and convert as many as 50 gasoline-powered city vehicles to CNG by March 2012.
• Cost of the fueling infrastructure will be $500,000, with the total cost of the conversion kits being $900,000. The design and engineering of the project is estimated at $50,000.
• Grant also includes $300,000 in matching funds for the purchase of property, with the matching amount to be generated from private donations.
• Conversion will cut Owasso’s fuel costs by 20 percent to 25 percent.

A picture of the portable fueling tank the Route 66 guys made.

CNGNow estimates that the United States operates about 1,100 of the 12,000 CNG stations in the world to power. These stations power only 150,000 of the estimated 10 million CNG vehicles worldwide. That’s only about 1.5 percent. Infrastructure is going to be paramount in developing CNG vehicles into a viable alternative to replace today’s automobiles. We can’t all construct our own portable filling stations like the guys from Route66. Let me know what you think of a CNG vehicle world in the comments below.

Mark McConville and U.S. Rep. Spencer Bachus, R-Vestavia Hills, outside the U.S. Capitol with a Capitol Police Officer. (The Birmingham News/Mary Orndorff)

NGVsNow was hosting them at the Capitol in celebration of their completion of the trip from Santa Monica to Chicago. Their trip covered took 10 days and covered 2,460 miles. After the trip was over, NGVsNow invited them to to continue their journey to the reflecting pool in front of the Capitol. The 1966 Pontiac GTO is a beautiful car to begin with, but the fact that it has been modified to run on compressed natural gas, and emits 80 percent less carbon monoxide than it’s gasoline-powered counterparts makes it look even better.

The first thing you’ll notice when you’re speaking with Mark, and what sends a little chill along your spine, is how much they believe in what they’re doing. One of the things Mark mentioned was the feeling he gets filling up his tank knowing that the compressed natural gas is an American fuel and that the money he’s spending to fill up isn’t going to support a country that might not be friendly to the United States.

Mark spoke about the timing of the trip and how he watched President Obama speak shortly before they left and heard his challenge to “unleash American innovation.” Mark said that they took that statement to heart and plastered it across the side of their trailer, with a little modification…”unleashED American Innovation.”

I wasn’t the only one taking notice though. Congressman Spencer Bachus (AL-6) stopped by to see the car and actually took it out for a short spin. Congressman Bachus had a great quote about the project.

“Mark McConville and Keith Barfield left a lasting impression all along Route 66 with their car and their message about alternative fuels.  It’s fascinating to see how an old ‘muscle car’ can be converted into a clean-burning, low emissions vehicle.  This shows that we can solve our energy challenges using American technology and ingenuity.  It brought great publicity to Alabama here at the Capitol and the only other thing we needed driving it around was an eight-track tape of Little GTO.” You can read the rest of Congressman Bachus’ release here.

A lasting impression indeed. Here are some pictures I took including the trailer that was signed by people that saw the car during the journey. Mark was also nice enough to take a moment and talk about some of the people he met on the journey. Enjoy and leave a “congratulations” to them in the comments.

Look for that later in the week but in the meantime you can watch the News6Tulsa video below to wet your whistle. You can also read last month’s post about Keith and Mark on our blog or read about the whole trip at route66goatgas.com.