CNG vehicle catalog

On gas fuel from the depths of centuries ...

It is known that the first internal combustion engines ran on gas.
This section contains information about rare cars that were not gasoline and diesel.
You can take part in the expansion of the category by sending photos of vintage cars to the site.

Gas-cylinder machines

A bit of history
ВIn 1799, the French engineer Philippe Le Bon discovered luminous gas and in 1801 he took out a patent for the design of the gas engine. In contrast to the modern engine, compressed air and compressed luminous gas were fed into the combustion chamber using two compressors.
In 1839, Englishman William Barnett patented the idea of an internal combustion gas engine powered by lamp gas. 20 years later, Belgian inventor Jean Etienne Lenoir creates a two-stroke gas engine in which a mixture of air and combustible gas is burned in the working cavity of the device.
In 1876, German mechanic Nikolaus August Otto and entrepreneurial engineer Eugen Langen create a four-stroke gas engine.
It was only in 1880 that the Russian engineer Ogneslav Kostovich created the first gasoline-powered carbureted internal combustion engine, which was intended for the airship «Russia».

Gas bus at a bus stop, Paris, 1942

Paris, april 1942

Car with a gas holder (1930s)

ZiS 156A (1949-1957)

Gas car of the 1940-50s

Gas car of the 1930s

Gas truck GAZ-44 (1939 release)


German tanks Panther and Stug, working on lighting gas

Gas generator machines

A bit of history
Back in the 30-40s of the 19th century, engineers proposed a version of a car capable of driving on wood. For this, a gas generator was attached to the car.
A gasifier is a device for converting solid or liquid fuels into gaseous form. The most common gas generators are wood, charcoal, coal, brown coal, coke, and fuel pellets.

In 1938, in foreign Europe, there were about 9 thousand motor vehicles running on gas generator fuel. By 1941, this number had increased almost 50 times. Including in Germany their number reached 300 thousand.
The first in the USSR test of a car on the FIAT-15-ter chassis with a gas generator set by V.S.Naumov took place in 1928. In 1934, the first test run of gas-generating vehicles on the Moscow - Leningrad - Moscow route was carried out, in which GAZ-AA and ZIS-5 with installations designed in NATI participated.
Since 1936, the serial production of gas-generating trucks (ZIS-13, ZIS-21, GAZ-42) began, and since 1941, the CTZ and KTZ tractors have been produced with gas generating units on wood chocks.