Originally published March 20, 2013. Updated July 16, 2026.
Natural gas vehicles are common across China, Iran, India, Pakistan, Argentina, Brazil and Italy, where a 2017 count put the world’s fleet at about 24.45 million vehicles, a table Wikipedia sources to the industry group NGV Global. Pakistan’s own count that year was roughly 3 million vehicles, up from the more than 2 million a 2013 blog post by energy analyst Geoffrey Styles described. The US never built a fleet on that scale, even with natural gas priced well under gasoline at the pump. Since then, electric vehicles have overtaken natural gas as the fast-growing alternative fuel story worldwide, with more than 17 million EVs sold globally in 2024 alone.
How many natural gas vehicles are on the road worldwide
The most complete country-by-country count of natural gas vehicles comes from a 2017 table on Wikipedia, sourced to the industry group NGV Global. It’s the most recent worldwide breakdown available, which means these numbers describe where the fleet stood nine years ago, not where it stands today.
| Country | Natural gas vehicles (2017) |
|---|---|
| China | 5.0 million |
| Iran | 4.0 million |
| India | 3.045 million |
| Pakistan | 3.0 million |
| Argentina | 2.295 million |
| Brazil | 1.781 million |
| Italy | 1.001 million |
| World total | 24.45 million |
Source: Wikipedia, “Natural gas vehicle,” citing NGV Global/IANGV data, 2017 figures.
These seven countries account for most of the world’s natural gas vehicles. The US doesn’t appear near the top of that list, and it never has.
Where CNG dominates the fleet, from Iran to China
Geoffrey Styles, writing on his blog Energy Outlook in March 2013, put Pakistan’s natural-gas-vehicle penetration at roughly 80% of the vehicle market, a level he tied to the country’s need to cut its dependence on imported petroleum. Iran’s adoption ran higher still, and Styles attributed it to international sanctions that restricted imports of gasoline and other refined fuels.
By 2017, Pakistan’s fleet had grown to about 3 million vehicles, and Iran’s stood at 4.0 million, per the same Wikipedia count cited above. China held the largest national fleet in that table, at 5.0 million vehicles in 2017, ahead of every other country tracked. The Pakistan-specific figure that circulated in 2013 news coverage was already outdated by the time the 2017 tally was compiled, and no country in this list has a public, sourced count newer than that.
Italy and Latin America built a natural gas car culture
Geoffrey Styles, writing in March 2013, reported that more than 11% of new passenger cars sold in Italy in 2012 were natural-gas-capable, against 0.01% in the US that same year. He pointed to an Italian government purchase subsidy of about €700, worth roughly $945 at the 2013 exchange rate, and to a refueling network with more than 40% more CNG stations than the entire US, even though Italy had 83% fewer vehicles overall.
By 2017, Italy’s fleet stood at about 1.001 million natural gas vehicles. Argentina and Brazil built comparable fleets, at 2.295 million and 1.781 million vehicles respectively, in the same 2017 count. Italy’s fleet, added to Argentina’s and Brazil’s, brings the three countries to about 5.08 million vehicles combined, roughly a fifth of the world’s 24.45 million-vehicle total that year.
Natural gas vehicles in the US today
The gap between the US and everywhere else wasn’t about price. In 2011, natural gas made up less than 3% of US transportation energy, even though wholesale natural gas cost under $0.60 per gasoline-gallon-equivalent and retail CNG ran under $2.00 per GGE in many places, according to Styles’ 2013 post.
That gap hasn’t closed. Today, more than 175,000 natural gas vehicles run in the US, a count the Department of Energy’s Alternative Fuels Data Center doesn’t tie to a specific year. The refueling network has moved backward since its mid-2010s peak, and the same DOE page reports that CNG station counts fell after 2016, as some stations closed and fleets moved on to other fuels. The country counted 1,385 CNG stations and 81 LNG stations in 2025, next to 85,692 public EV charging ports the same year.
What CNG costs compared with gasoline right now
As of April 2026, retail CNG averaged $3.08 per gasoline-gallon-equivalent nationwide, against $4.09 for a gallon of gasoline, a gap of about $1.01 per GGE, or roughly a quarter less than gasoline.
If you’re behind the wheel of one of those vehicles, that gap shows up every time you fill up. It doesn’t show up in the sticker price of the vehicle, or in how far you drive to find a station open, and neither of those costs is in the DOE’s per-gallon comparison. For a car running short errands around town, the fuel savings add up slowly. For a vehicle running all day on a fixed route, covering the same stretch of road again and again, they add up fast.
Where natural gas trucks and buses still make sense
Natural gas engines still pencil out in vehicles that return to the same yard every night and run high mileage all day. The DOE’s Alternative Fuels Data Center points to that profile in refuse trucks and transit buses, which fuel at a central depot instead of hunting for one of the country’s public stations. Regional-haul trucks running fixed routes fit the same pattern.
Heavier trucks, the Class 7 and 8 rigs that haul regional freight, more often run on LNG than CNG, per the same AFDC source. These fleets fuel at their own depots, not at a retail pump, a different setup than the one facing a driver hunting for one of the country’s 1,385 CNG stations. Only 81 LNG stations serve the whole country, a shortage that matters far less to a fleet fueling at its own depot every night than to a driver searching for a public pump.
How EVs overtook natural gas as the alternative-fuel story
Per the IEA’s most recent count, the world sold more than 17 million electric vehicles in 2024, over 20% of new cars sold that year. That single year of EV sales comes close to matching the entire natural gas vehicle fleet the world had built up by 2017, even though one number counts a single year of sales and the other counts a decade of accumulated vehicles.
China shows the pace clearest. More than 11 million EVs sold there in 2024, about half the country’s new car sales. 1 in 10 cars on Chinese roads is now electric. That’s the same country that held the world’s largest natural gas vehicle fleet in the 2017 count, at 5.0 million vehicles. In the US, where natural gas never moved past a niche, more than 1 in 10 new cars sold in 2024 were electric. For more on how battery costs and storage capacity have moved, see our explainer on battery energy storage.
The 2017 tally is still the most recent worldwide natural gas vehicle count available, while EV sales get a new report every year. The next real signal will come when a fresher global count shows whether fleets in China, Iran, Pakistan or Argentina grew or shrank, and whether any of them started converting to electric drivetrains instead.
