Why wont the D.C. fools forget about Electric cars and use natural gas?

Why don't the DC fools forget about anything in the business world. Let the market work. If Natural gas is a good choice then people will demand it and car maker will build it.

Natural gas is a gas. If you go to cryogenic liquid natural gas then you would have acceptable energy densities and there is an effort to move trucks to LNG. There's even a plan for hybrid diesel engines that use a small amount of diesel as compression ignition and the rest of the fuel is natural gas. Of course, it takes energy to liquefy natural gas but that's often necessary to bring it to market anyways. Of course CNG would have the advantage that a compressor at home could refill your tanks every night thereby allowing a shorter range to be suitable but LNG would have to be refilled at depots which would have to be constructed.

Of course natural gas isn't necessary to run vehicles off natural gas. If natural gas is processed through a steam reformer, syngas ( carbon monoxide and hydrogen gases ) are produced which would then combine in Fischer Tropsch synthesis to form linear hydrocarbons like gasoline and diesel. Indeed, that's how the US currently dilutes their high sulfur diesel to meet federal ultra low sulfur diesel requirements ( Shell's GTL plant ). You're already running on natural gas when you fill up a diesel car in the US.

Ultimately, the reason why natural gas is cheap and plentiful is that it's an unwanted byproduct of oil production. Indeed over 60% of natural gas is flared at the well site instead of build the second set of pipes, compressors and liquefaction plants needed to bring it to market. They're called stranded natural gas. This means that the plentifulness and cheapness is artificial and won't be the case if we shift a significant energy load to it.

You are correct in assessing that electric cars are just chemical stores of energy and poor ones at that though you have to admit, they are cool. But we really don't have to change how energy is stored at the vehicles to change energy sources. Gasoline and Diesel are already very good chemical energy stores that are far better than batteries or natural gas and as our current supply of diesel in the US is largely made from natural gas by synthesis, we can make gasoline and diesel from any source of syngas including trash, old tires, dried sewage and directly from CO2 and H2O with whatever energy source we'd like ( Sandia Labs CR5 ). Technically, we can switch to any energy source whether it's solar, wind, geothermal, hydro or nuclear that we would want, without changing a single vehicle but that doesn't sell new cars does it...

DC isn't interested in saving the environment, it's interested in providing new jobs, economic growth and to appear as being environmentally friendly to the masses.

How far could you go on a tank of natural gas? Do you know that the price of natural gas, at least around here, has gone up a lot in the past two years? Also, do you think natural gas will last forever? It seems unlikely.

No time soon. Besides you will need refueling stations along the interstate roads. I don't think people will be willing to stop & find out that natural gas is actually human fart gas."Methane" or a reasonable facsimile for the politically correct consumer.

DC Politicians are not interested in fact or actually solving anything based on logic or real Economics. If it doesn't buy votes, they are not interested.