NGVAmerica has assembled updated information about vehicles and/or engines that have been certified by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and/or California Air Resources Board (CARB) to operate on natural gas, now published on its website as Available Natural Gas Engines & Vehicles.
Vehicles and/or engines have been certified either as –
- Dedicated vehicles – spark-ignited engine operates on natural gas only;
- Bi-fuel vehicles – spark-ignited engine operates on either compressed natural gas (CNG) or gasoline, but not both at same time: or
- Dual-fuel vehicles – compression-cycle engine operates primarily on natural gas but uses diesel as ignition “pilot”.
The new document lists vehicles and engines with certificates for MY2008 and/or more recent years and contains information from several new suppliers. NGVAmerica created the document to help NGV industry stakeholders, clean-air/clean-transportation advocate-allies, policy makers and prospective customers sort through the variety of claims about available systems and suppliers. The no-frills Excel-format PDF is regularly updated.
Instructions on how to use the guide explain that generally, CARB’s certification procedure imposes more testing and documentation requirements for both new-vehicle and aftermarket engine-retrofit (“conversion”) systems than EPA, although both CARB and EPA have similar emissions and on-board diagnostics (OBD) compliance requirements. While most states require only EPA certification of new vehicles and aftermarket retrofit systems, NGVAmerica says a growing number of states are opting to adopt CARB standards for sale and/or registration of new vehicles.
This Guide’s list of light -duty vehicles includes those manufactured at the factory by traditional Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs), and those retrofit with EPA- or CARB-certified engine systems after leaving the factory using systems made by Small Volume Original Equipment Manufacturers (SVMs). Furthermore, SVM engine retrofit systems may be installed before placing the vehicle into active service or afterward.
Certified Retrofits
System installations are usually handled by the SVMs themselves or their Qualified System Retrofitters. Note that, unlike the unregulated “conversion kits” that were available from dozens of manufacturers in the late-1970s through the mid-1990s, all gaseous fuel engine systems on the market today are engineered and tested to comply with the same tough CARB and/or EPA emissions performance requirements as the large automobile manufacturers.
For more information go to the NGVAmerica website.
