Nearest gas station: 0 miles!

For a new product to succeed it has to be better. It has to do a job people like to get done, and it has to do it better than previous solutions.

Honda has just come up with such a product. The PHILL. It makes it possible to fill your car at home, while you are sleeping, and to a rate that sure will give you sweet dreams. If you have a CNG car, that is.

The problem with CNG (compressed natural gas either drilled or from landfill gas) has always been the infrastructure. How do we get enough filling stations out to secure the demand of the cars and how do we get enough cars out on the market to create sufficient demand of gas? Especially when other solutions such as ethanol, biodiesel and in future, fuel cells, will compete in the same marketplace.

But while nobody saw the woods because of all the trees, Honda did just that. They saw that the infrastructure is in fact out there already and it could be much more compelling to drivers than the current alternative. By using the PHILL appliance CNG drivers in California now actually can use their own gas equipment in their homes to fill their cars. So instead of driving to odd places to find CNG, PHILL users now barely ever have to visit a gas station at all. And, on top of that, they pay about a buck for a gallon.

Using the PHILL means a new behavior which is something completely different compared to changing people's attitudes towards alternative fuels. But it doesn't have to harder. Just different..