In this work, we develop a control-oriented, reduced order dynamic model of an autothermal reforming (ATR) reactor. The targeted application is within the on-board fuel-processing unit of a fuel cell vehicle. A previous effort has illustrated that a predictive-type controller may be required to achieve desired performance within this application. The objective of the current effort is to determine the existence of a reduced order model with enough speed and accuracy to meet the online computational demands of a predictive controller. Central to the model development is an approximation of reaction rates that achieve reasonable accuracy near the inlet while preserving the overall energy balance. The resulting scheme converts a partial differential equation model into a set of ordinary differential/algebraic equations and achieves nearly a 4 orders of magnitude improvement in computational speed while preserving most of the nonlinear characteristics of the original system. Such results give clear indication that the hurdle of computational viability can be overcome and opens the door for further development of a predictive controller for the ATR application.