As a vehicle fuel, LNG (liquefied natural gas) has higher octane number, better antiknock performance, less engine loss, lower fuel cost and better environmental protection performance compared with traditional fuel oil. Therefore, the development and application of LNG commercial vehicles have been greatly promoted abroad.
Widely used in commercial vehicles
In the United States and Germany, for example, the promotion of the LNG car has been going on for many years. It is understood that the current operation of LNG vehicles are mainly commercial vehicles, such as urban public transport, urban engineering vehicles, sanitation vehicles, logistics and transportation companies. First of all, because commercial vehicles have a large amount of transportation, high utilization rate, and natural gas prices are cheaper than fuel. Second, LNG cars have less pollution emissions. Compared to diesel engine emissions of large particles and noise pollution, LNG vehicles pollution is less.
In the United States, the current use of LNG models is the largest logistics vehicles, in short heavy truck use, LNG car with a single cylinder vertical in both sides of the frame, you can select a combustion mode, can also choose HPDI HCCI mode (similar to diesel engine). For example, in the short distance vehicle UPS logistics group of the most used HPDI type control, this type of compression ignition, ignition diesel as pre ignited natural gas is gradually recognized by the developed countries, as early as in 2011, UPS bought 48 LNG trucks and into the California Lake Ontario company. At the same time, the New York City Department of transportation also operates natural gas buses. And telecom companies Verizon, Communications, Inc. and Att Corporation (AT&T Inc.) are also using natural gas as the driving force of the truck.
In Germany, Hellmann, a large logistics company, began testing LNG fuel heavy trucks in the autumn of 2012 and carried out road transportation for 4 weeks. Since then, LNG trucks have also opened the German LNG logistics supplier market.
The road test shows that LNG truck can complete the task well, Schenker logistics director Ren Stocker said the trial proves that compared to diesel vehicles, LNG car can reduce carbon dioxide emissions to a great extent, and other harmful substances (such as carbon particles and nitric oxide and other substances) emissions can be ignored.
Natural gas trucks have become a new trend in the global scope, compared with conventional diesel trucks, natural gas trucks are more environmental protection, greenhouse gas emissions, lower operating noise is lower than the price of diesel trucks, although high, but in the long run, the advantage of natural gas trucks in oil prices rising today will become the more obvious.
In addition to the United States and Germany, countries such as France, Spain, Holland and Portugal also focus on commercial vehicles, including buses, logistics vehicles and garbage trucks.
Policy guarantee, LNG automobile promotion
Similar to our country, the promotion of natural gas vehicles through policy support is also one of the means of some countries. For example, through the reduction of taxes and fees and subsidies to achieve the purpose of promoting LNG vehicles. In Sweden, the road tax paid by natural gas vehicles is about 3000 kroner (about 2862 yuan) less than diesel cars. In Sweden's capital Stockholm, Monday to Friday 18:30 to 6:30, each car import vehicle in the city to pay traffic fees, but natural gas vehicles and other energy-saving vehicles are exempt from blocking the fare, each green car per year can save about 14400 kronor. In Pakistan, the customs office will exempt the imported natural gas equipment, vehicles and refitted parts, and the tax authorities will exempt the natural gas cars from the sales tax. In Bangladesh, imported gas stations, equipment, modifications and natural gas vehicles are exempt from tax policy, and banks and leasing companies can provide loan support for the modification of natural gas vehicles. The Asian Development Bank has helped the Bangladesh capital Dhaka purchase l million sets of natural gas vehicle modifications and car cylinders. There is Thailand, not only for the natural gas engine, and the original vehicle parts implement preferential tax policies, tax rates fell from 20% to 40%, finally fell to 0%, and each converted a natural gas vehicles, the Thailand government will subsidize 10 thousand baht (about 2122 yuan).
In the process of developing natural gas vehicles, Croatia has made a new exploration in the form of organization, which provides a reference for other countries. In 2009, Croatia established the "environmental protection and energy efficiency fund" financing institutions". After the establishment of the institution, mainly through two measures to promote the development of clean energy automotive industry. One is through the management of toll fee, traffic control, transport of goods within the city and city traffic facilities construction, improve transport system application of alternative fuel and fuel cell, so as to promote the development of the clean automobile project; LNG and CNG used in automobile industry, taking the priority of public transport services, taxi, driving and public service; support the new LNG and CNG gas station construction through financial means. The other is through the cooperation with the Ministry of ocean, transportation and infrastructure, as well as the Ministry of economy, labor and enterprise, to carry out the transport plan to reduce environmental quality". The program's main job is to replace environmentally friendly passenger cars, trucks and school buses, and provide 50 thousand pools (about 6750 euros) of subsidy for each vehicle through financing institutions.
The quantity of filling stations is limited and the application of LNG vehicles is limited
With our country is same, the construction of filling station is insufficient, it is the important factor that restricts the development of LNG vehicle. The United States is the world's second largest producer of gas, and research and development of LNG technology has emerged in 1930s. But as of 2009, there were only 110 thousand natural gas vehicles operating in the United States, according to the US energy information administration. The United States has rich resources and advanced technology, but it is not widely used in LNG vehicles. This is not related to the 66 LNG filling stations located in 10 states throughout the United states.
A spokesman for a foreign engine company said the use of fuel oil has a network of gas stations across continents, as well as natural gas, through pipes and into homes and power industries. The challenge now is to build networks that are ubiquitous like diesel stations. UPS spokesman Cara gerardt?? Ross also said, UPS will have about 17 thousand heavy trucks in 1000 vehicles converted to LNG truck is the long-term goal of them, now unable to reach a goal just because of "filling station limit".
It is understood that China's largest private energy companies of the new Austrian group was begun in the United States to promote the infrastructure construction of gas powered heavy truck, the background is the local abundant natural gas resources will help us get rid of dependence on transportation industry refining diesel imports of crude oil. New Austrian Olympic group responsible person recently said that the group does start building LNG filling station in the United States, but in a new market, new areas, its development process will have a variety of variables. So this year's goal is to build 50 LNG fueling stations.
It is worth noting that the largest natural gas transportation provider, Clean Energy (clean energy company) is building a "natural gas highway" project, will build 150 LNG truck refueling stations in major U.S. highways, and plans to enter the downstream industry chain of natural gas vehicle filling stations, namely transportation, taxi, airport traffic and municipal vehicles market.
In fact, most of the natural gas vehicles on the road in the United States belong to the government or enterprise fleets with centralized gas stations. Analysis of investment in the United States had referred to a decision of the American carmaker General Motors, in a July 2010 report, to provide the use of natural gas vehicles in the domestic market, the U.S. natural gas suppliers will also provide support, help enterprise team car modification for natural gas vehicles, and the construction of natural gas filling station.
Although gas prices are cheap, the total cost of building LNG stations in the United States is not low, or comparable to that in the country. There are market participants said that the cost of each filling station in the United States is about 1 million U. S. dollars (about 6 million 220 thousand yuan), the cost of domestic construction is about millions of yuan. The new Austrian group international business leader Jiang domain pointed out that different parts of the US built gas station price difference is very obvious, in general, the cost is higher than the domestic, such as purchasing local equipment, hire local personnel, hire a local company to do the design and so on, than in the high cost.
Under the premise of utilizing rich natural gas resources and advanced natural gas technology, Germany has accelerated the application of LNG vehicles in China by speeding up the construction of LNG fueling stations. It can be said that the development of German natural gas vehicles is mainly due to the high degree of close cooperation between natural gas companies, government and automobile manufacturers and other stakeholders. By the end of 2010, the data show that Germany has become the European natural gas station the largest number of countries, reached 900, natural gas is about 91 thousand and 500 cars, mainly concentrated in the city of heavy vehicles, including buses and garbage trucks.
(source: Internet)
