An Overview of Automotive Home and Neighborhood Refueling

Home refueling helped address the fuel availability issue for gasoline vehicles a century ago; it may still have important implications for alternative fuel vehicles today. The positive consumer response and lessons learned about home refueling for compressed natural gas vehicles, battery electric vehicles, and plug-in hybrid vehicles demonstrate its potential and warrant further research. This paper presents a historical review and comparison of home refueling methods for a wide range of motor vehicles; the home refueling experience of these vehicles and consumer preferences and response to these methods are discussed as well. A description of neighborhood refueling is also provided. Furthermore, the important questions, challenges, and opportunities of adopting a home and neighborhood refueling strategy for alternative fuel pathways are summarized. The paper intends to help us understand the potential of home and neighborhood refueling and the difference between home refueling for different alternative fuel pathways, and help facilitate further exploring of the implications.