LOS ANGELES - T. Boone Pickens, your car is ready.
Toyota rolled into the Los Angeles Auto Show with what it says is the world's first and only compressed natural gas hybrid vehicle, a car that gets 33 mpg and, if nothing else, shows a lowered Camry looks pretty sweet on 19-inch wheels. Toyota has no immediate plans to mass produce the car, a concept vehicle the company says it built to show the versatility of the Hybrid Synergy Drive system more commonly found in the ubiquitous Prius.
That's not to say Toyota isn't covering all the bets when it comes to deciding the fuel of the future, suggesting we might see a gassy Camry after all.
"In the near future, growing demand for liquid petroleum simply and effectively will exceed supply," says Chris Hostetter, VP of advanced product planning. "Before that occurs, automakers must look to vehicles powered by alternative fuels. We believe CNG will be one of those alternatives."
Toyota's been down the CNG road before with mixed results. The company produced a four-cylinder CNG Camry in 1999 and leased it to customers in California, but because gasoline was still dirt-cheap, it never caught on. Toyota killed the program a year later. Honda's had a bit more success with its CNG Civic GX, which earlier this year was named the greenest car in America. Still, CNG is little more than an afterthought when it comes to transportation fuel, something some eco-friendly auto advocates find puzzling.
"They run just like any other gasoline vehicle, and we have a lot of natural gas in this country," Ron Cogan, editor of Green Car Journal and GreenCar.com, told Wired.com. It's still amazing to me that we aren't looking to natural gas as a transportation fuel when we've got so much of it."
Toyota designed the CNG Camry at its Advanced Product Strategy Group and turned over construction to the guys at Metal Crafters in Fountain Valley, California. They grafted on a slick front end, tweaked the bumper and gave it a coat of metallic silvery blue paint that looks hot in person. Toyota wouldn't pop the hood for us, but it's probably got the same drivetrain you'd find in the Camry Hybrid but converted to CNG. The car carries the equivalent of 8 gallons of the stuff at 3,600 PSI, giving the car a range of 250 miles.
Photos by Jim Merithew / Wired.com.
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