I like to share trends with you when I spot them. Natural gas vehicles (NGVs) look like a winner in the upcoming years. Ford announced that they tripled their sales of NGVs from 2010 to 2012. Natural gas is becoming the fuel of choice for truck fleets, buses and taxis.

Due to a lack of re-fueling stations, and the relatively long time needed to re-fuel, consumer NGVs don’t look to be over-taking the market any time soon. Bifuel (gasoline and natural gas) vehicles could become popular, but hybrid technologies rarely end up being major game changers.

For commercial fleets that come back to a yard each night, though, the NGVs outlook looks strong. The functional fuel cost of natural gas is about half of that for gasoline or diesel. The pollution and greenhouse gas issues are better for NGVs. With the wide spread fracking technology improving dramatically, the long term cost outlook for natural gas should be much lower (and more stable) than in the past.

Bankrate.com notes in an article about the pros and cons of NGVs that:

Today, 40 percent of new garbage trucks and 25 percent of new buses in the U.S. can run on natural gas, Kolodziej says. “In the city of Los Angeles, all the buses are now running on natural gas,” he says.

For consumer vehicles, my bet remains on electric cars. They are zero emissions at that hard to get efficient individual car level. Then the natural gas can be efficiently burned at the power plant (replacing more problematic coal generation). That’s where I think the car trend will go.

But if you run a construction fleet, look hard at NGVs. The return on investment will push you toward an immediate decision.