New VW Eco Up! member
 

Hello from Finland. I've had my eco UP now for one year and it has been a great little car. I've done 23000km with average CNG consumption of 2.7kg/100km which is 0.2 under the spec 2.9kg (which just jumped to 3.8kg with the new WLTP standard.)

So far my only eco mods are VW Lupo 3L magnesium wheels with 145/80-14 ecopia tires for summer and same wheels with 165-14 MS tires for winter (still have 175-15 nokia hakka7 studs for real winter if need be)

I'm not keen to make the car look like a magnet but a clean kamback would be nice.

https://ecomodder.com/forum/attachme...2&d=1545371292

Welcome to the site!

Welcome, smurfbus!

Envious!

I've admired the Up for years. Of course, it's not available in Canada/US., though it was discussed for Canada (we occasionally get forbidden fruit that the States didn't, eg. first generation Smart Fortwo, Nissan Micra, etc.).

I'm a fan of the latest gen. Mirage. But in every review/comparison against the Up!, the VW won handily (primarily because its suspension was tuned for European tastes vs. the numb & extremely compliant Mirage, which was designed primarily for developing markets).

How serious are you about doing a Kammback/tail? What type of driving do you regularly do?

That's pretty cool.
How common is CNG there?

Some background. My previous car (had it for 14yrs) B5 Audi S4 2.7t broke several times last fall so I sold it for spares. I had already got the ecobug with it but could not get it to really shine with constant four wheel drive and around 450whp on E85 but it was fun to test things mostly on the ecu side with cruise control activated 4 ecu setups. I had leanburn on it too. Lots of weight reduction too.

This Up on the other had is already pretty well thought of so the kammback sounds like a doable mod but my fabricator skills are ’none’ and I dont like it to look like I did it. Slight lowering would be nice but its not economical enough overrall. Maybe a Pan under the engine as it does not show out if it looks horrible. My commute is 50km per day and mostly out of rush hours so that helps my consumtion figures.

Not common but its growing as we have independent biogas manufacturers all over. Only lapland and east are out of CNG. Southern Europe is CNG friendly and I think Italy leads on numbers. Here CNG is so much cheaper at the moment that its a no brainer to choose it if you live near a CNG station. On my commute trip there are three stations and even though my tank is only 11kg its good for one week.

How do they make the bio gas into sellable fuel?
In the united states bio gas is almost always made and burned on site to fire a boiler at an industrial plant.

In the United States the only place I have seen a meaningful number of CNG pumps is in Texas. With natural gas prices being low right now, CNG probably costs 2/3 to 3/4 the price of gasoline.
If you had a home fill station, it would cost almost nothing to fill up.
11kg is a lot, I had to assume that a car would probably hold around 5 to no more than 8kg.
When I was looking at CNG a few years ago the information was as hard to find as fill stations.

This is the biggest operator locally.
gasum.com/en/About-gas/biogas/Biogas/how-is-biogas-produced

Welcome !
Nice to see a fellow up CNG driver :thumbup:


I suspect you have High-energy H-Gas ?


I get less than that on Low-energy L-Gas ...


Lupo 3L wheels ....
I have long wanted to do that :rolleyes:

I wouldn't get the 145 tyres approved on the car though
Not sure about the wheels themselves either


How did it alter the gas consumption ?
Handling on 145s ?

Fermentation then running the gasses through a selective reverse osmosis filter (a branch of my soon-to-be-former employer makes those filter elements)

You can also get CO2 out of it for use in the beverage industry, and fertiliser that doesn't "breath" CO2 or methane into the atmosphere - home composting is not "green", it's actually as polluting as dumping ...


Happens often in Europe as well, but is inefficient.


Yeah - too bad the compressor is costly & needs expensive, mandatory periodic maintenance here in Belgium (likely in Finland as well), ruining the benefits.


On something like a minivan, you can get up to 25-30 kg ...

Biomethane seems smarter than ethanol as a motor fuel, even though it still has some drawbacks.


At least Europe-wide, Italy seems to be leading this field. Well, Italian-made CNG conversion kits are still usually reported to be the best ones.

Where I work the bio gas division costs almost nothing to operate and saves around $1,000 worth of gas per day.
That sounds pretty efficient to me.

Due to the high cost of natural gas setup I just waited and went electric.
But I wouldn't mind a large selection of junk yard CNG left overs, that way I could use CNG instead of propane for back up home heating.

They mix both blends on the grid atleast on the biggest manufacturer grid and my local station is closest to the local biofactory so I dont know the grade. I think even the biostuff is high pressure low CO2 stuff.

I think the axle weight is good for those 145/80 tires but I still have my stock Up wheels with michelin energys if neeed be. It was not big jump maybe 100grams on the lighter narrower wheels but winter setup should gain more. Hadling is fine on both tires with about 3.5bar pressure.

Has to be H-gas with your consumption ;)
It's rather hard work to get the up! below 3 kg on L-gas

Anyway, if it's biogas, you're doing very well :thumbup:
Outside of Belgium -we don't have biogas here- I try to tank biogas whenever I can

For the periodic technical test , likely :cool:


BTW, you're not allowed to lower a CNG up! due to R110 regulation
(height of CNG tank above the ground)
The eco up! has VW's Blue Motion Technology, which on a regular petrol up! means it gets lowered a bit, but not so on the CNG version :(


You could install an airdam and lower the pan behind that a bit, rather than lowering the whole car

The problem with the up CNG is that it consumes so little that there isn't very much to be gained.
Mods are never going to pay for themselves ;)

I think all gasum stations sell H-gas.

I will try MOT with the luposetup and if it goes well sell the energys.

Good call on the lowering!

Hopefully next summer I get some motivation to tinker with aero. I might try wai in the mean time. Have you tested it with your eco up?

Welcome nice rig and spec sheet.

No, it already draws its air close to the engine, with the engine layout leaving little room to route it anywhere else

https://data.motor-talk.de/data/gall...8262522287.jpg


For the uninitiated:
The red circle is the natural gas injection system.
To the left of the air intake trumpet is the CNG pressure regulator/coolant heat exchanger that warms up the expanded, and thus chilled, natural gas
(expands from ~ 200 atm to ~ 7 atm)

2003 Volkswagen GTi 1.8 turbo project
 

After years of making it go faster and handle better I am now looking to make it get better gas milage. The engine has many performance upgrades including an APR multi program ECU. Many of the hardware upgrades allow the engine to achieve better gas mileage when the lead foot is removed from the equation :-). Current plans are to add a custom high milage ECU program to maximize gas consumption. Will also be looking at low rolling resistant tires and narrower rim replacements. Current gas milage ranges between 25 city and 35 highway. Hoping to raise that to 35 and 45 mpg. There are also carbon fiber hood and fender replacements to reduce weight.