Fleet Markets
Converting vehicle fleets to clean, domestic natural gas provides multiple benefits.
Significant Cost Savings
Natural gas vehicles have far lower operating and maintenance costs, generating significant vehicle life-cycle savings.
- Businesses and cities have found that natural gas vehicles pay for themselves in fuel savings. Many fleets report 15-28% savings compared to diesel fleets.
- The lifecycle costs of natural gas trucks already are competitive with traditional fuels, and many companies have found that these vehicles are cheaper to maintain.
A California Natural Gas Vehicle Coalition report found that "the relative average annual cost difference of owning, maintaining, and operating comparably equipped vehicles was found to be small over the range of expected fuel prices, vehicle technology costs and vehicle fuel economy."
Reducing Dependence on Foreign Oil
- Replacing 3.5 million medium- and heavy-duty trucks and buses with CNG-powered counterparts by 2035 would save at least 1.2 million barrels of oil per day.
- Natural gas has the potential to reduce transit and school bus oil use by 80,000 barrels a day. If 420,000 diesel buses are replaced with NGVs by 2035-then natural gas transit and school buses could eventually displace half of the oil used for all buses by 2035. - Source: Center for American Progress
Improving Local Air Quality
- The EPA notes that these natural gas vehicles emit about 25% less carbon dioxide than their diesel or gasoline counterparts. A CNG school bus is 223.5 times less toxic than an average, diesel-powered school bus. Source: Coalition for Clean Air
- Converting one heavy-duty truck from diesel to natural gas is the equivalent of taking 325 cars off the road in terms of pollution reduction.
