The sexy-looking little red car parked in Gene Gabus’ Des Moines Motors showroom doesn’t run on gasoline, ethanol or batteries. This baby fills up with compressed natural gas (CNG).

Gabus, president of Gabus Automotive Group, hopes to begin selling the Chinese-made vehicles, which will be converted at locations in Iowa and Nebraska from gasoline power to run on CNG, next summer. Working in tandem with Gabus is NatGas Services LC, an Ankeny company that plans to develop a network of CNG refueling stations and sell conversion kits.

Both businesses are targeting high-mileage commercial fleet users as their primary customers, to either purchase new vehicles or convert existing ones.

Gabus recently held an open house at the Urbandale dealership to show off the vehicle, which can run 50 miles on a gallon of CNG, along with a CNG refueling station he has just had installed. He has been working to sign on dealers throughout the Midwest to sell the vehicles, which are undergoing additional U.S. crash-safety tests before they can be sold. Equipped with a a 5.5-gallon CNG tank, the Noble CNG vehicle will have a range of 250 to 300 miles between fill-ups, and a suggested sticker price of $16,900.

Gabus hopes to create a network of more than 200 dealers in the Midwest and supply them with up to 10,000 vehicles a month. Much of the demand will depend on the future price of gasoline, he said. “If gas goes to $4 a gallon, I probably won’t be able to get enough of them (to meet the demand).”

Jim Huyser, owner of NatGas, said his company plans to install the state’s first public fast-fill CNG refueling unit in Grimes by year’s end. The unit will be able to fill a seven-gallon tank with CNG in about one minute. NatGas has also begun marketing conversion kits for both fleet and passenger vehicles.

“We have adopted the ‘Field of Dreams’ mentality,” Huyser said, referring to its plans for selling the conversion kits and refueling units. “If we build it, they will come.”

The company has acquired dealership rights in the Midwest with several leading refueling unit and conversion kit manufacturers, he said. “Our major focus will be someone who is driving a lot of miles already,” Huyser said.

At current prices, CNG costs approximately $2 per gallon.

The cost savings, coupled with the benefit of cleaner air, will provide a significant incentive for private investment, said Jordan Vaughan, coordinator of the Iowa Clean Cities Coalition. The coalition wants to encourage private-sector investment in public refueling stations that are also accessible to businesses’s CNG vehicles.

“There’s a lot of interest from fleets,” Huyser said. “We hope that some fleets in Greater Des Moines will consider it,” he said.

How many CNG vehicles does Gabus plan to sell in the venture’s first year? “All I can,” he said.