“She said, ‘I won’t drive this car, it will blow up.’ But then she saw the savings, and she calmed down.”

Gazprom, the state-owned energy monopoly better known for heating houses and powering factories in Europe, is making a bet that natural gas cars are an alluring market for future growth, at home in Russia and in other European countries that have bought its gas. All the ingredients are in place for adoption of natural gas vehicles in Russia, the world’s second-largest gas producer after the United States, with economic and environmental payoffs.

Economically, it’s no contest at the pump compared with gasoline because natural gas, whose main component is methane, is so abundant and cheap in Russia. It costs about $2 a gallon less than gasoline. (For such comparisons, compressed gas is measured by its cost for a volume containing the same amount of energy as a gallon of gasoline.)

Lax regulations in Russia have already provided a foothold for natural gas for cars. Even before the auto industry officially joined in, do-it-yourself kits were readily available. Unlike the hybrids and plug-ins produced by brand-name automobile companies, many of the natural gas cars in Russia are aftermarket conversions. In Russia, a complete system can be bought for less than $1,000 at a roadside repair shop in parts of the country where natural gas is commonly used, like the region around Krasnodar.

Natural gas fuel systems in the United States, in contrast, are handled with extraordinary care. High standards are set for the tanks of compressed gas.