MAY 11

While some folks are successfully mixing gasoline and electric engines, VW thought, "why not mix natural gas and gasoline?" That's what they're planning on doing with the EcoFuel VW Touran.

Unfortunately, natural gas isn't on the path toward carbon neutrality...but it is certainly better than the alternative. Natural gas is a much cleaner fuel than gasoline, and the majority of the U.S. demand is satisfied by production on this continent. You can also fill up using the natural gas line at your home (without having to pay a road tax.)

But the even more fascinating thing to me about this is that, when running on gasoline (it can do either, to eliminate that pesky "range anxiety" factor) it gets 45 MPG. This is an extremely impressive number for a minivan, and they're doing it with some fancy technology.

First, they start out with a fairly tiny 1.4 L engine, then add direct injection technology and a turbo-charger (so that acceleration times aren't too dismal) and suddenly they're squeezing a lot of power out of every drop of gas.

Of course, there are no plans to sell the car in North America, and we haven't seen a release date or a price (which we expect to be very high) but it's exciting nonetheless.

Via TreeHugger

Comments (7)

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written by MD, May 11, 2009

Isn't this the same as propane injection for a diesel or NOS for a petrol engine?

Also.. a propane engine can run a higher compression ratio than a comparable petrol engine.

So the VW 1.4 sounds like it is nothing more than an enriched fuel burning high CR engine...

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Biogas
written by Fabian Fjälling, May 11, 2009

Natural gas is fossile fuel, but biomethane is not. They are both methane, but produced in different ways.
Some scientists argue that biomethane, seen from a life cycle perspective, yields between 140% and 220% GHG reduction compared to driving with gasoline as fuel. It is with other words better to take your biomethane powered Touran for a spinn, than taking a walk in the woods, if you are concerned with the level of greenhous gases in the atmosphere. Biomethane also yields far more energy per unit biomass than any other biomass derived fuel. Neither does it displace food production to the same degree as any other biofuel, since the microbes producing methane are not picky with what type of biomass they are fed.
I would say biomethane is one of many needed silver bullets needed to fix the climate crisis.
Natural gas is needed to get gas powered cars on the roads in great numbers, but once the marke for methane as road transport fuel is established, the switch should be towards biomethans.

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BioMethane Scale
written by Hank, May 11, 2009

Definitely biomethane is preferable, and we should be burning it wherever possible (instead of letting it escape to be a greenhouse gas.) But the big problem with biomethane is the scale, there simply isn't enough of it. We can drill holes in landfills until the cows (with methane bladders strapped to their butts) come home, but we're not going to be able to maintain interstate commerce with biomethane.

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Scale
written by Fabian Fjälling, May 12, 2009

According to University of Vienna, the EU could substitute 97 % of its road transport fuel by domestically produced biomethane, without displacing food production. As far as I know, that calculation is not taking into account using algae as feedstock. Since algae can double its biomass in 8-10 hours I believe algae to methane would be a good option. Neither is it taking into account future efficiency gains. Even though biomethane might not be able to replace all fossile fuels, it is by far the best option.

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Careful with the Road Tax comment
written by Jim, May 12, 2009

Be careful about extolling the bonus of not having to pay the road use tax when filling up. I've read news articles of people who have made their own bio-diesel or converted their car to use natural gas as you talk about here, and are then later hit with HUGE back tax bills later on after word gets out about what they were doing. The government is charging the road use tax for using the road, buying the gas is just (currently) the most convenient/accurate place to collect it. As systems like this and EV cars become more prevalent, they will have to change their methods of collection, but until then, be careful trying to duck under the radar.

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A better way to collect road use tax
written by ed, May 12, 2009

The government is charging the road use tax for using the road, buying the gas is just (currently) the most convenient/accurate place to collect it. As systems like this and EV cars become more prevalent, they will have to change their methods of collection, but until then, be careful trying to duck under the radar.

the government should look into collecting the road use tax via car license registration. higher tax for bigger vehicles and lower tax for smaller more efficient vehicles. it'll be an annual tax and collected the same time the vehicle owner renews their car registrations. no one will be able to avoid it and no one will end up paying more or less for it.

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written by Fred, July 15, 2009

pretty slow, but better than regular gas

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