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It's a gas: Three-wheel Roadster gets 60 mpg on alternative fuel

Deseret News (Salt Lake City), May 2, 2008 by Brice Wallace Deseret News

WEST VALLEY CITY -- The sleek, three-wheel style of the American Roadster may catch the eye, but it's what's inside that its supporters believe will be just as attractive to potential customers.

The three-cylinder engine runs on compressed natural gas, making tooling down the road in the wedge-shaped Roadster a potential bargain for motorists accustomed to $3-plus-per-gallon gasoline guzzlers.

"When you figure you can buy a gallon of natural gas equivalent for 63 cents at the station and the car gets over 60 miles per gallon of natural gas, you're looking at for $3, you get five gallons and you can go 300 miles," the vehicle's chief designer, John S. Green, said Thursday during a demo of the vehicle at Rocky Mountain Raceway. "And you don't mess up the environment. It actually boggles my mind."

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Green, chairman of Eco-Fueler Corp. (eco-fueler.com), based in Bend, Ore., has been thinking about it for a while as he worked on development of the Roadster. With about a dozen vehicles produced in Eugene, Ore., since last year, the company is geared to springboard to full production.

The American Roadster may someday be ubiquitous on U.S. highways, and some perhaps might roll off assembly lines in Utah.

Green said Thursday that Salt Lake City is being considered as a possible site for a Roadster manufacturing plant. He and other company officials were in town to demo the vehicle and talk to officials about financing and other matters. An exact site for a manufacturing plant in Utah has not been determined.

"I would say there's about a 90 percent probability of putting a plant right here in Salt Lake City," Green said. "We're looking for additional funding to actually do a plant here."

About a dozen people work in Eugene, and the company has produced about a dozen "beta" vehicles during the past year. The company is anticipating full-scale production, with the first plant in either Lexington or the Louisville area of Kentucky.

Green said a Utah facility could have 900 to 1,200 employees, although the Kentucky plant would be two to three times that size.

"If we can get the funding, which is not excessive, and we get a building and the cooperation from the community and the state, we could probably be in production (in Utah) in six months," he said.

Visitors looking over the two Roadsters at the raceway on Thursday saw vehicles 74 inches wide in the rear and about the same length as a Toyota Camry. Roadsters weigh 1,650 pounds and have a rear, 100-plus-horsepower engine able to move three people up to 120 miles per hour. The Roadster has a detachable hardtop, a heater and air conditioner.

The weight and three-wheel configuration allow it to be classified as a motorcycle by the U.S. Department of Transportation, which means it can cruise in carpool lanes. Another potential lure is that despite the $19,900 cost, federal and state tax credits can bring that down by nearly $7,000 to about $12,900.

Green envisions a day when Utahns and others will fill up at compressed-natural-gas stations -- Utah has 20 open to the public and 71 more for commercial vehicles -- or at home with the fueling appliance that comes with each Roadster. Utahns currently own about 5,000 vehicles that run on compressed natural gas.

"We've done no advertising, and we've already sold $35 million worth of reservations," Green said. "If we had production right now, I think we could sell 100,000 units a year, and that's a very, very conservative estimate...People want to buy these."

Jerry Hendricks, Eco-Fueler's chief executive officer and chief financial officer, said the public's response has made the company optimistic: "We go to car shows and people sit in the car, and there's no question they're buying it."

Tom Harrison, co-founder of Bountiful-based U.S. Development Funding, was curious enough to take one for couple of spins on Thursday. "It's a very clever idea to take a car and design it around the limitations of a motorcycle in terms of EPA and federal regulations," Harrison said. "It's like designing a drug that doesn't need FDA approval."

Harrison said the Roadster "drove very well." But he believes it will be attractive only to "experimenters and people who want something different," and to people who would become "desperate" because of skyrocketing gasoline prices.

"It's a product ahead of its time, which would make it virtually impossible to sell in today's market," Harrison said.

He also expressed concerns about safety, but Green noted that a strong frame protects the occupants, and the use of natural gas makes the Roadster "five to 10 times safer than a gasoline car" because of natural gas needing a certain mixture with air before it can ignite. "It's the safest vehicle fuel in the world, and I think scientists would agree with me," Green said.

Hendricks said major automakers have shied away from using natural gas in the United States. But Green noted that plentiful natural-gas reserves in North America could fill vehicles fueled by compressed natural gas for perhaps 200 years.

It's a gas: Three-wheel Roadster gets 60 mpg on alternative fuel

Deseret News (Salt Lake City), May 2, 2008 by Brice Wallace Deseret News

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