America’s First OEM Compressed Natural Gas Truck – Ram 2500

We soon may be filling up our car or truck with compressed natural gas.  You know it’s bad when you speed by a gas station in fear and find yourself scared of the thought that you’ll have to go back to that horrible place and get harassed by that danged money counter speeding up in numbers ever so quickly. Best way to avoid filling up with gasoline? Not using gasoline. Introducing America’s first compressed Natural Gas Truck (CNG) – the Ram 2500.

It’s actually titled as a bi-fuel vehicle which runs on compressed natural gas and then kicks in with gasoline once the CNG is out. You can think of it kind of like an electric vehicle with the gas-powered generator kicking in once the electric range is completed. Compressed Natural Gas(CNG) is made by compressing natural gas (mostly methane) and is then stored in tanks at a pressure of 2900–3600psi. The major benefit of using CNG is that it is much less expensive (approx. half the cost of gasoline) and it is environmentally friendly.

The Ram 2500 packs a 5.7-liter HEMI® V-8 and gets its fuel from Compressed Storage Tanks and an 8 gallon fuel tank. The engine is custom-made to run both compressed gas and regular gasoline. In addition to the engine, specially made cylinder heads and valves, a second (CNG-specific) fuel rail and set of injector’s, combustion and durability enhanced spark plugs, and a drive-train that switches between the CNG and gasoline automatically and seamlessly.

The two 130 liter CNG tanks are located on the forward portion of the trucks bed. While on CNG you will be able to get approx. 255 miles of driving until switching over to gasoline (automatically kicks in when you’re out of CNG) giving you an extra 112 miles bringing the total mileage on a full fill of CNG & gasoline to 367 miles.

So we now that we’ve talked about Ram coming out with the first, commercially produced, CNG (Compressed Natural Gas) truck to hit the states with the CNG Ram 2500. Since gas is a pretty hot topic right now, we thought we’d dive a little deeper with some interesting statistics we gathered from the U.S. Department of Energy. Wondering how much money you’d save by going to an alternative fossil fuel? Check out the chart below showing you the cost per gallon equivalent of the more popular fossil fuels:

As you can see by the chart, as of January, the lowest priced source of energy for vehicles would be CNG (same source powering the new CNG Dodge Ram). Surprisingly enough, regular gasoline comes in second place as the cheapest fossil fuel. If energy-powered vehicles (à la the Chevy Volt) were in the mix they would take top spot with an impressive $.8-$.16 per mile.

CNG is looking more and more promising as manufactures are recognizing it and developing vehicles that utilize it as well as more pump stations carrying the CNG refills. CNG is the healthier and cleaner solution as well as it corrodes and wears the various engine parts less rapidly than Gasoline. Emissions are cleaner to boot, as there are lower emissions of carbon produced.