Why Natural Gas-Powered Vehicles Are Catching On

Facing soaring gasoline prices in 2011 and more than 100 miles of daily driving for his job as a traveling nurse, Daniel Piekarek confronted an uneasy choice: find cheaper gas or start updating his résumé. So, a few years before many of the world’s biggest companies would follow suit, Piekarek crossed his fingers and turned his life over to natural gas. On EBay he bought a used Honda Civic GX, the only commercially available natural gas vehicle in the U.S. at the time. “My costs went from $30 a day to $5 a day,” says Piekarek, who lives in Michigan and pays as low as the equivalent of $1.50 a gallon to fill up. “It’s been a real moneymaker.”

The shale revolution, which in recent years turned fracking into a household word and the U.S. into the world’s second-largest natural gas producer, is only half a revolution. It increased supply enough to meet current U.S. consumption for 100 years. To truly upend the global energy balance, the U.S. must also revolutionize demand. And the only way to do that is to get natural gas into what has always been the greatest prize: light trucks, 18-wheelers, government and delivery fleets, and, of course, private cars.