drgoodwrench

U.S. Automakers Can't Afford to Overlook Natural Gas Opportunities

We build and sell home refueling units for CNG, conversion kits for cars and trucks to be Bi-fuel, and make new natural gas heavy duty engines (diesel conversions). ALL our sales are overseas because CARB can't figure out how to effectively deal with certification of conversions, and EPA follows CARB's lead. In general, to sell a kit in the USA, it has to be certified by CARB at a cost of $200k-400k. However the certification is good ONLY for a specific model year of a vehicle in a specific trim. So to make kits available for 1993 Mazda Miatas, we are looking at 2 certifications. To cover 1990-1993, we are looking at 6 certifications, potentially 2.4 million dollars. We could never sell enough kits to cover our costs.
How much is a kit? EPA/CARB Certified conversions are $20k from BayCorp. Our conversions for the same applications overseas are $2k, including installation! CARB has effectively blocked any chance of a conversion market developing in the USA.