Green Cars have negatives too!
An article on MSNBC.com entitled “Natural gas cars: Clean, green, going nowhere” has some very interesting points about natural gas cars, but specifically about the Honda Civic GX. This car runs on natural gas, and is sold in California and New York. First, let me start with the positives of this car. Natural gas is cheaper than regular gasoline. It’s about $2.12 to $2.22 a gallon compared to about $4.00 a gallon of regular gas. That’s a plus for sure. Then there is the fact that in California you can ride in the HOV lanes on the freeways. The HOV lanes are the fast lanes, and because the natural gas car is considered a low-emission vehicle, you can drive in them, when normally you need more than one person to be in these lanes. Another plus for the natural gas Honda!
Alright, now that you have heard the positives, environmentally friendly and cost efficient, here are the negatives. This Civic costs about $24,590 compared to a regular Civic that costs about $17,700. That’s a big difference, especially in this economy. Another problem is that the refueling stations are not available everywhere. In NY and CA, there are alot of refueling stations, but you definitely need to be within the areas of these fueling station, or you could get stranded. You can pay a few $1000 and get a home refueling station that hooks up to your natural gas in your home, but it can take a great deal of time to refuel your car this way. The Honda Civic GX natural gas vehicle is good for commuters that aren’t travelling too far away, this is not a good choice for people that enjoying travelling and want to leave the state of NY or CA. There are many advantages to natural gas cars, you just need to decide your purpose for the car and be willing to deal with some of negatives of these cars as well.