Looks like they are listening to me...

http://www.motorcities.com/vehicle/08LFC521108612.html

A new era of natural gas powered cars begins: First natural gas engine with turbo and direct injection debuts in Passat Passat TSI EcoFuel unifies dynamic driving with extremely low emissions

Pro Pain for the eco win.

when will it come to the US? but a good start, none the less

"100 kilometers in the new Passat TSI EcoFuel only costs €4.33** "

Can someone do the math to convert to Miles/dollars? Im an idiot, and need my information spoon fed to my steel-boot wearing dock-worker blue-collared self

Pretty straight forward dimentional analysis. Just cancel out the stuff until the dimensions you want are left. Read my web page on Demensional Analysis and you'll for ever after be able to convert anything to anything.

100 KM / Euro 4.33 = 23.09 KM/Euro

Convert to Miles / USD

100KM * 0.62 Miles/KM = 62 miles

divided by 4.33 Euro * 1.41 Euro/USD = 6.11 USD

comes out to 62 Miles / 6.11 Dollars = 10.1 Miles/USD.

My 'Rolla goes 30 miles for $1.78 today, or 16.85 Miles/USD.

Hess play fair, how much would that gasoline cost on their continent today? How much would the CNG cost over here?

Dimentional/demensional (aka dimensional, I assume) analysis isn't complex. Just use Google. It can already convert damn near anything.

According to the US Department of Energy, gasoline in Germany on Nov 17, 2008 (the time at which the €4.33 number was generated) was $5.65 US per US gallon. The US at that time was $2.65.

So in Germany, Hess' Rolla would go 5.30 miles/USD. A bit better than half as far as the Passat. At that time in the US, it would have gone 11.3, which is about 10% better than the Passat.

This came up on the ride home today when we saw regular unleaded for $1.79 and diesel for $2.79.
That means that if you bought a Gas Jetta you would be getting 29mpg on the highway, versus 40mpg in a TDi diesel.
To drive 500 miles, the gas car cost $30.86 and the diesel cost $34.88.

Close, but for a diesel to be more cost effective than the gas counterpart, they need even better mileage or diesel fuel prices need to come down up here. There are of course other factors like finding diesel, longevity of the engine, driving dynamics, etc. but it was an interesting comparison.

Psst! This Passat is running on natural gas :) And when used on the same continent, it's about half the cost to operate compared to the magical Hess Rolla.

I noticed last time I was in Canada that diesel and gas prices were very close. I'm guessing there are taxation reasons.

Add to the equation North America has a lot of natural gas and you can see why it is my top choice for "fuel of the near future"

The killer is the technology has existed for years and is well proven. There's lots of propane and natural gas powered industrial stuff out there. Heck you can even buy permanent install home backup generators that run on CNG.

I'm sure that CNG is a very good way to go. If you have gas at home, you can get a pump thingie and fill your car yourself off the gas line, from what I hear. There's no gas where I live, so it wouldn't matter to me, but otherwise, put a tank in the trunk of the Rolla, a regulator, tie into the injectors and remap the Megasquirt and I'd be good to go.

How hard would it be to have it run on CNG or Gasoline? We've got forklifts and a boom lift that can switch back and forth between LP and gasoline, so I wouldn't think it would be that hard.

You can do a CNG conversion but it hogs the trunk and filling stations are far and few between. They have the civic CNGs around here as city cars and some of the cabbies run CNG. The only problem with CNG is that for the space it takes up you can only drive so far on it. I think you can convert almost any car to run on CNG if you put the tank in the trunk.

Yeah, pretty much any engine can run on CNG. Used to be you had to have specific carburetors for CNG vs propane but with the Lambda sensor and advances in electronics I don't think it would be real difficult to make a fuel injection system which could be switched between the two. The one real stumbling block is, as benzbaron mentioned, the shorter range for a larger tank because both have to be stored under pressure. Still, it's doable. In fact, CNG pipelines already go all over the place, the infrastructure changes to add fueling stations wouldn't be as hard as it would for other alternative fuels.

I'm sure it's possible to do an engine to run on all 3 (CNG, propane, gasoline) but now you have 2 complete fuel storage and delivery systems in 1 vehicle which would take up a lot of space. It's not without precedent, like 16vCorey says there's plenty of dual fuel forklifts running around.

Jensenman wrote: I'm sure it's possible to do an engine to run on all 3 (CNG, propane, gasoline) but now you have 2 complete fuel storage and delivery systems in 1 vehicle which would take up a lot of space. It's not without precedent, like 16vCorey says there's plenty of dual fuel forklifts running around.

But can it be done easier than dual fuel - dual powertrain (gas/battery) hybrid?

I would think so, mainly because the batteries for a hybrid or an electric are so heavy when compared to the amount of energy they store. If you take the battery pack for the average hybrid, then build a propane or CNG tank of the same volume, there's a lot more energy stored in the propane/CNG than the batteries meaning you can go a lot further.

Not to mention you don't have to run two completely different propulsion systems side by side.

ummm ford did the dual fuel pickup a bit ago....

Peco's cars (Philadelphia Energy Company) run on CNG. They have little triangle stickers on the back of them, maybe to warn emergency workers if the car's ever in an accident. SEPTA was trying to make CNG busses a while back too, but I don't know if that happened.

I've always been puzzled with it never took off...

Jensenman wrote: Yeah, pretty much any engine can run on CNG. Used to be you had to have specific carburetors for CNG vs propane but with the Lambda sensor and advances in electronics I don't think it would be real difficult to make a fuel injection system which could be switched between the two. I'm sure it's possible to do an engine to run on all 3 (CNG, propane, gasoline) like 16vCorey says there's plenty of dual fuel forklifts running around.

There already is a fuel injection system that runs on gas and propane in newer Nissan forklifts. It has 2 separate injection systems piggybacked on the intake. The gasoline injection is garden varity with injectors on a rail and mounted near the intake valves, the lpg injection is a Throtle body injector of sorts. It is mounted above the throtle plate and injects vaporized lpg at relitivly low presure, (but much higher pressure than carburated lpg). They share a common ecm and all related sensors including o2 sensor in the exh pipe. In my opinion the lpg injection part of the system needs some serious improvement. The lpg vaporizors fail frequently, as do the lpg injectors due to the tar like residue in the lpg vapor that gums things up quickly if the fuel quality is anything less than perfect.

I think what needs to be done is to devolope a lpg injection system that injects the fuel as a liquid in multi point style. I think that the injectors, fuel rail and intake manifold would all need to be heated because of the freezing that happens when lp goes from liquid under pressure to gas at atmospheric pressure, but that problem aside, I think it could be done. Do the megasquirt gurus want to get started on this now?

The home filling station offered to work with the Honda Civic takes so long to work, you might as well charge a battery. I think it's about 6-8 hours. But that's fine! Plug that baby in when you get home from work and she'll be ready for you in the morning. If she's not, or if you forget to plug it in, drive something else. The car can still be filled up quite quickly at a CNG filling station - and there are probably quite a few near you right now.

propane power has been done people...

http://blog.cardomain.com/2008/07/23/one-mean-machin/ I read about this car a few years ago.. something like a 454 powered by propane in a cobra replica running up the pikes peak hillclimb

Twin_Cam wrote: SEPTA was trying to make CNG busses a while back too, but I don't know if that happened. I've always been puzzled with it never took off...

When long Island bus converted to CNG many moons ago I got to sit in on some of the presentations. There are a few things that make it impractical. You need more CNG to go the same distance so the entire roof is covered with fuel cylinders, they are slow to refuel unless you can raise the presure beyond what it comes out of the line at. Their curent fulling station has a gigantic underground compressor to do that but it takes a lot of space and energy. It's like an electric car in that if you can hook it home at night at home you wont have a problem, but if you have to fill 200 in a few hours your pushing your luck.

Way back when I was a forklift parts dude there was a guy who owned a propane company in Columbia who had an AMC Ambassador wagon that had been converted to run on propane, he drove it everywhere. The scary part: the propane tank was about 5 feet long by 2 feet diameter and was mounted on the roof. The first thought when people saw it: 'rolling bomb'.

Wally, did they say why they didn't go with removeable tanks for CNG? That's how the propane forklift people do it, you just swap out cylinders like you do for a barbecue grille.

I've been thinking of doing a flex fuel propane/gas conversion on the Samurai, but it's a costly conversion and I have to pick the right propane carb. From what I've read, the best solution would be to leave the existing carb in place, add a fuel cutoff, and get a propane carb that installs inline behind the air filter to inject the propane when I switch to it. Of course I'd be doing the swap purely for my own entertainment (apart from having a car that's ready for a Mad Max future, that's always a plus) because the parts involved cost $$$$.

The bubble on the top is filled with fuel tanks, If I remember there a nine tanks, each about seven feet long and two feet in diameter. It would probably take longer to swap them then to fill them.