A NATURAL SOLUTION.

Byline: Tim Christie The Register-Guard

From a nondescript industrial building in west Eugene cluttered with candy-colored auto bodies, John Green is preparing to change the world.

Green believes he's truly built a better mousetrap - in this case, a sleek three-wheeled car that gets 70 miles per gallon, burns fuel that costs $1 per gallon and emits virtually no pollutants - and that the world will soon be beating a path to his door.

He and his partners plan to sell the Eco-Fueler American Roadster for just shy of $20,000. After they showed a prototype at car shows in Los Angeles and Portland and at an agricultural expo in Tulare, Calif., earlier this year, they got about 350 orders for the low-slung vehicle.

Eco-Fueler Corp. officials say the first production vehicle will roll out in about two months, and within six months they hope to be building 100 to 150 vehicles per month.

Green, a Springfield real estate developer and inventor, said he wants to change the world, not get rich off his enterprise.

"This will turn the auto industry upside down," he said.

With gas prices back at $3 per gallon, and a war-torn Middle East threatening to send them higher, the company would appear to be hitting its stride at the right time.

The American Roadster has a sleek design with a removable hard top, and it promises sporty performance, high mileage and low pollution. The production models will run on a water-cooled, horizontally opposed engine that will generate about 125 horsepower in a vehicle that weighs just 1,500 pounds.

"We're going to fly," Green said.

But the vehicle also has its limitations. It has a single front seat, a tiny bench seat in back and no trunk. Strictly speaking, it's a motorcycle, which allows the company to bypass costly federal crash test and emissions requirements. It's meant to be a commuter car, or a vehicle for a Sunday driver, or something to tow behind an RV.

And to fuel it, you would need natural gas at your home.

The key piece of technology driving the American Roadster lies not under its swoopy fiberglass skin but inside a 4-foot-long black box that comes with the vehicle.

Inside the box is a machine that compresses natural gas. Owners of the American Roadster will connect the compressor to their natural gas line and use it to fuel the car. It takes about 4 1/2 hours to fill the two eight-gallon canisters behind the back seat.

The compressor is Green's patented invention, and he said it marks a significant advance in compression technology that has not changed for about 65 years.

Green's machine uses hydraulics to compress natural gas, instead of the piston-driven compression that's been the standard method. His patented technique is far more reliable and efficient than the conventional compression method, he said.

Right now, the cars are being assembled in a 19,000-square-foot industrial building. Green said they're looking for space in Springfield to build the compressors.

Eventually, if the cars take off, Green said the company will construct a series of smaller regional factories to build the vehicles, rather than have one big factory.

Despite the vehicle's light weight, low profile and fiberglass body, Green said it will be safe. Its steel frame, roll bar and suspension is designed by Pat Blair, who has designed NASCAR racing cars.

Green's background with compressed natural gas goes back to 1972, when gas prices were soaring. He sold kits that allowed gasoline-powered cars to run off compressed natural gas. But the compressors failed, and Green had to return three-quarters of the money, said Jerry Hendricks, the company's acting CEO and CFO.

Hendricks and Green founded Eco-Fueler Corp. in 2004 and have been running the company on "very little capital," Hendricks said. "It's been a real boot strap operation."

"People have pledged all the money we need," Green said.

But the company, and Green's technology, is starting to attract interest from investors, would-be dealers and other auto makers, he said.

Green said he had one major manufacturer ask him if he would consider licensing his technology. He turned them down flat out.

"This is not going to get buried," he said. "This is not going to be put on a shelf somewhere."

He saw what happened to General Motors' now legendary electric car, the EV1, which is the subject of new documentary, "Who Killed the Electric Car?" General Motors leased the EV1 to consumers in California starting in the late 1990s, but pulled the plug on the vehicle a few years later, rounding up the cars when leases expired and crushing them in the California desert.

"It will not end up like the EV1, I promise you," he said. "David hit Goliath in the head with a rock and that's exactly what we're going to do."

CAPTION(S):

The American Roadster goes from zero to 60 in less than six seconds.