By Shari Kaplan
The Los Gatos Police Department's 12 new patrol cars are a welcome change, not only to the officers who drive them, but to the environment as well.
The roomy 1995 Chevrolet Caprice sedans, which sport powerful V-8 engines, are dual-fuel vehicles that can run on either gasoline or on cleaner-burning compressed natural gas (CNG).
According to Steve Regan, maintenance superintendent for the Parks, Forestry and Maintenance Department, a $230,000 grant from the Bay Area Air Quality Management District enabled the town to have the new police fleet converted to operate on CNG as well as gasoline. A $33,000 rebate from PG&E provided additional funds.
Two more town vehicles, including a pickup truck for ranger use, also were converted to dual-fuel use, and a heavy-duty street sweeper that runs solely on CNG will soon rumble into town.
Although the dual-fuel patrol cars are expected to run mainly on CNG to reduce air pollution, officers can choose which fuel tank to access by flipping a switch near the bottom of the dashboard. If the CNG tank becomes depleted, an onboard computer will automatically switch to the gasoline tank without preoccupying the driver.
"An advantage to that is if we have to send officers out on a mutual-aid call to another city where they don't have pressurized natural gas, the officers can still operate the vehicles," LGPD Capt. Jeff Miller said.
Regan cites another advantage: The price the police pay per therm (a unit of measure) for CNG averages around 60 cents, whereas gasoline runs between 96 cents and $1 per gallon. Currently, the patrol cars are refueled by Volunteers in Policing or officers who access CNG tanks at one of two PG&E stations in the South Bay. Before the year is up, a natural gas compressor unit will be installed on town-owned property to serve as a mobile CNG refueling system.
According to LGPD Capt. Duino Giordano, a few officers said they smelled a slight natural gas odor in the vehicles, but it was not a major problem. He also said that the cars experience a 1-3 mph difference in acceleration performance.
"It's a hardly noticeable difference, and in the long run, we'll see a [positive] difference in that the motors run longer," he said, explaining that engines running on CNG are not subject to the damaging deposits that accumulate over time by burning fossil fuels. Emissions detected during smog checks of CNG engines are also significantly lower than in gasoline engines.
This article appeared in the Los Gatos Weekly-Times, January 24, 1996.
©1996 Metro Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved