It’s not just the electric car market that is expected to rise rapidly in the coming years – it’s the natural gas vehicle market too.

According to a new report from Pike Research, worldwide natural gas vehicle sales should increase from 1.9million vehicles a year in 2010 to more than 3.2million units annually by 2016. Overall, the 12.6million unit global market currently should reach 19.9million vehicles over the same time period even though natural gas refuelling station development is not expected to grow at the same rate – but will reach 26,000 by 2016.

Concurrently, there will be a substantial growth in the use of natural gas as a transportation fuel – it will reach 19,123million cubic metres of gas globally by 2016.

According to Pike, India should overtake Iran for the lean in natural gas vehicle sales in 2014 with Iran and Pakistan to rank second and third respectively. China will also see strong growth although natural gas vehicles there will remain a small percentage of the market with China focused on electrification.

Meanwhile, it is the US market that is expected to show the strongest growth – 25.4 per cent between 2010 and 2016 resulting in 32,619 vehicles being sold in that year.


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