Originally Posted By: PandaBear
2) The CNG tanks are only certified for 15 years, so you either junk it for pay a huge fortune to replace it at 15 years. It cost almost the same as an EV battery (around $5k).
3) The pumping sucks if you do public pumping. You either wait in line with a bunch of garbage trucks and then another 10 mins to pump it to full pressure, or you go to a retail pump that may be broken and not worth the cost to fix (and therefore not fixed).
SoCal has a whole fleet of CNG/LNG buses and the FTA dictates buses bought with federal funds to hold up for 12 years, so the 15-year design life of a composite CNG tank is sufficient. The drivetrain, not so much. LACMTA and OCTA were using Detroit Diesel's S50 CNG, and flirted with Cummins or Doosan engines as repowers. The Bay Area stuck with diesel and hybrids, while SoCal is almost always xNG for public fleets.
However, CNG doesn't have the same power output as diesel or hybrids. SFMTA was looking into CNG buses, but they didn't do too great with the hills in San Francisco and having to deal with fueling/gas detection. SF's trash trucks are still diesel, but Oakland's trucks are moving to LNG.
It hasn't caught on for cars in the US - even with taxicabs and I remember the CNG Crown Vic, CNG Chrysler K-Cars and Civic being used by public fleets and taxis. The Prius and Escape Hybrid killed that off. Autogas is big in Australia however, must be gas prices down there.