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Gas dream runs on empty
VW’s clean Passat suffers from government apathy, says Neil Lyndon
There is a fossil fuel for cars which produces 30 per cent fewer emissions than gasoline, costs a fraction of the price to process, and is in such abundant supply that existing resources look capable of supporting global demand well into the third quarter of this century.
What is it? Natural gas. Why don't we use it? That's what Volkswagen would like to know.
At the Geneva Show which opens this week, VW is exhibiting the Passat Estate TSI EcoFuel concept - a car powered by either natural gas or conventional petrol.
This car carries its natural gas supply in a trio of tanks beneath the boot floor. They are supplemented by a 31 litre tank for conventional petrol. Utilising all these tanks, the Passat Estate TSI EcoFuel can travel almost 500 miles. A new engine-management computer controls the switch between conventional fuel and natural gas, and the engine has been strengthened to deal with the higher temperatures involved in burning the gas.
In the past, it has proved impossible to extract reasonable performance from natural gas; but VW has overcome this problem by fitting the 1.4 litre engine with both a supercharger and a turbocharger, operating sequentially. The result is a car capable of 130mph and 0-62mph in less than 10 seconds, at the same time as it returns better fuel economy and lower emissions.
Sound like something you might fancy? If so, forget it. The curious absence of government encouragement ensures that you are as unlikely to run a natural gas car in this country as you are to live to be 120.
Natural gas needs to be compressed before it will work in a car so you can't fill up from your household supply. You need to visit a filling station.
How many such stations exist in Britain?
Eighteen. ·
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Why doesn't the UK use it? Perhaps it's because there are already three popular automotive fuels on the market and adding a fourth (CNG) - which is somewhat popular in Germany but not anywhere else - is a bit daft.
Since I'm about to buy a new car, a Citroen C4, we'll compare the differences:
Petrol version, 1.6 litre, 110 hp engine with manual gearbox: 169g of CO2/km. Cost: 13,995 pounds. Over four years with 10,000 miles per year the running costs, including fuel, will be 51p/mile.
Diesel version, 1.6 litre, 110 hp engine with semi-automatic (Tiptronic-style) transmission: 120g of CO2/km. Cost 16,195 pounds. Over 4 years with 10,000 miles per year the running costs, including fuel, will be 51p/mile.
That is, the diesel version emits 40 per cent less CO2. Unfortunately, if you want to be a bit more "eco-friendly", you'll need that additional outlay of 2,200 pounds.
As I said earlier, though, the UK - and a lot of Europe - already has an alternative fuel to both petrol and diesel. It's called LPG, otherwise known as 'Autogas'. Not only is it 20 per cent cleaner than petrol, but existing cars can be retrofitted with an LPG kit and tank, as I did with my Citroen Xsara. I paid about 900 pounds to retrofit my Xsara with an LPG kit and it paid itself off - because LPG is roughly half the price of petrol - after about 18 months of driving.
Yes, alternatives to petrol are important. But we already have decent alternatives and cars like the C4 with its modern transmission and efficient diesel engine are what we ought to be focussing on, rather than a self-serving, CNG-based Passat.