Natural gas: It's the alternative alternative

One of the best could be cars or trucks that run on compressed natural gas, or CNG.

They run far cleaner than gasoline or diesel vehicles, their fuel costs about 33% less and most of the stuff is natural gas produced in the U.S., helping reduce dependency on foreign oil.

Unfortunately, there aren't many publicly available CNG filling stations outside of California. The Golden State has about 100 such locations, including 60 within 100 miles of downtown Los Angeles. Many of them, however, require a special key card for admittance, so CNG vehicle drivers can't just drop in.

The newest is in Carson. It was opened last month by the Sanitation Districts of Los Angels County, an agency that also operates a public CNG station at a recycling facility in Whittier.

The Carson station, at Figueroa Street and Sepulveda Boulevard, is expected to serve business, government and taxi fleets that use older, mass-market CNG vehicles such as the 2004 Ford Crown Victoria sedan and the 2005 GMC Sierra and Chevrolet Silverado pickups.

There are a number of CNG vehicles out there that private companies have converted from standard gasoline cars and trucks. The sanitation agency, spokesman Basil Hewitt said, wants to switch its entire fleet of 120 vehicles to CNG by 2012.

Even as CNG fleets chug along, the number of models available to everyday drivers is dropping.

For a while it appeared that automakers were going to start jumping on the bandwagon. In 2004 there were nine models available from General Motors Corp., Ford Motor Co. and Honda Motor Co.: three full-size pickup trucks, two compact cars, three vans and a full-size sedan.

But all except Honda have dropped CNG vehicles from their lineups. The manufacturers blame the dearth of publicly available stations, the lack of public knowledge about natural gas vehicles and -- until the last few years -- the relatively low cost of oil and gasoline.

The lone 2007 model CNG passenger vehicle marketed by a major automaker is Honda's Civic GX, which is sold only in California and New York and carries a fairly hefty price tag of $25,185. That compares with $22,600 for the base Civic hybrid and $15,400 for the base DX gasoline model.