Honda Civic GX

The third generation GX was awarded the 2012 Green Car of the Year by the Green Car Journal in November 2011 at the Los Angeles Auto Show. For eight years up to 2011, the Civic GX was rated first by the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy in the "Greenest Vehicle of the Year" list (excluding the years 2001, 2002, 2003, and 2006 when the Honda Insight hybrid topped the list) For 2012 the GX was surpassed by the Mitsubishi i-MiEV. For 2014, the GX ranked 10th, after several hybrids and electric vehicles. 2015 was the last model year for the Civic GX.

History

The Honda Civic GX first appeared in 1998 as a factory-modified Civic LX that had been designed to run exclusively on CNG (compressed natural gas). In 1998 the Civic GX cost $4500 more than a comparable Civic LX. The car looked and drove just like a contemporary Honda Civic LX, but did not run on gasoline. In 2001, the Civic GX was rated the cleanest-burning internal combustion engine in the world by the EPA.

The GX was first leased to the City of Los Angeles to be used by parking enforcement officers and other city employees as a live pre-production test. The GX followed the same model year design changes as the Civic LX model, until the model year 2001 when a CVT (continuously variable transmission) was introduced in place of the 4-speed automatic transmission. In the 2006 year model, the GX again was equipped with the automatic 5-speed transmission, which improved its fuel economy and extended its range to 250 miles. In 1998 the GX was available for special order in some states to consumers, California and Colorado in particular.

In 2006, the Civic went through its greatest modification since its inception. All variants of the Civic were awarded the 2006 Motor Trend "Car of the Year" award. The 8th generation Civic remained unchanged from 2006 and was also available in the GX model. The GX was a limited-availability car, with fewer than a thousand units per year being produced by the factory.

In October 2006, the 2007 Civic GX became available in New York. In July 2009, the GX became available to the public in Utah. In April 2010 the GX became available to the public in Oklahoma. The CNG Civic in this market is related to favorable natural gas costs and the numerous high-pressure filling stations. The promotion of CNG conversions by natural gas producers headquartered in Oklahoma provided an incentive for Honda to market the Civic GX there. State of Oklahoma incentives were a factor that led United Parcel Service to convert part of their delivery truck fleet to CNG. After December 2010, the GX was available for fleet sales in all 50 states. Retail sales were expanded to 35 states in the fall of 2011.

The last model year for the Civic CNG was 2015. The company said it had sold about 16,000 natural-gas vehicles since the model was introduced, mainly to taxi and commercial fleets. American Honda Motor Company executive vice president John Mendel commented that Honda was phasing out efforts to develop natural-gas powered vehicles and would instead focus on hybrids and electric vehicles. He cited the lack of a CNG fueling infrastructure in the United States as the main reason for the decision to stop producing the Civic CNG. "The infrastructure, while it improved, just wasn't as convenient as petrol," Mendel said. "We gave it a pretty long run and we tried and tried and tried."