I used to work for the local gas company. For decades they've had a compressed natural gas conversion for cars and a small compressor setup for the home at reasonable startup cost ($2,500 at the time). The range wasn't great, (for range you need LNG) but it was better than today's all electric cars and you could fuel up at home in a much shorter time than with electric. The fleet all ran on natural gas, filling up at their own company-maintained filling stations, and besides being cheaper and having lower emissions, as a collateral benefit they were getting exceptional life from the engines of their fleet vehicles.
As I was interested in this conversion myself and only learned about it by accident, I struck up a conversation with the head of marketing asking why they weren't promoting it, since it was an existing solution that people could buy for their own vehicles if they only knew about it.
And most importantly, in most areas the distribution network is already in place, something that Electric is currently struggling with.
He said that the company was under pressure not to promote a consumer compressed natural gas solution for automobiles. He was unwilling to say where the pressure was coming from. I always wondered about that.
So, in short, the solution already exists, exactly as described, and has since at least the nineties. As far as I can see, there's nothing to develop here, just remove the roadblocks to existing solutions.
Mind you, it works best for dedicated commuter and in-town cars, because to keep the cost and complexity down, the car *only* runs on compressed natural gas, and CNG does not have the energy per volume as either LNG or gasoline. But in my opinion CNG is more practical than electric in several respects, not the least of which there are no batteries to replace/recycle.
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