After the story about adsorbed natural gas conversions for motorcycles, one commenter said, “If one could fill up at home that would be really cool.” Well, with Phill, you can. Made by FuelMaker, Phill is what is termed a Vehicle Refueling Appliance (VRA) and is one of several products made by the company. It hangs on your garage wall and is connected to your home natural gas supply lines. It has been designed to work in the U.S. with the Honda Civic GX, a natural gas powered car, and the Sierra and Silverado from GM. In Europe, a lot of vehicles can be refilled with it, however, no motorcycles are on the list, yet. You simply plug in the line when you park in the garage and Phill refills your tank and automatically shuts off when done.

Phill is what is termed a “TimeFill” appliance, meaning it refills the tank at a slower rate while it compresses the gas. There are also “FastFill” solutions for fleets which uses pre-filled tanks to transfer already compressed gas in a couple of minutes.

Phill works with CNG solutions, not the ANG setup we wrote about from EnergTek, however, a similar solution may not be far off for that technology either, especially since there is growing interest in natural gas as an alternative fuel. This type of switchover from gasoline to natural gas in the internal combustion engine could happen very quickly compared to the time necessary before we’ll see widespread use of electric vehicles.

It’s interesting how much new technology is appearing, or in many cases, how quickly existing technology is becoming well known, as a result of the run up in gasoline prices. I think natural gas has a lot going for it, ANG in particular, and I would be interested in seeing some natural gas conversions on a variety of motorcycles to see how well it works.

Link: Phill by FuelMaker