New VW Eco Up! member

[smurfbus]

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.

[Daox]

Welcome to the site!

[MetroMPG]

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?

[oil pan 4]

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

[smurfbus]

Originally Posted by MetroMPG

Welcome, smurfbus!

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

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.

[smurfbus]

Originally Posted by oil pan 4

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

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.

[oil pan 4]

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.

[smurfbus]

Originally Posted by oil pan 4

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.

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

[euromodder]

Originally Posted by smurfbus

Hello from Finland. I've had my eco UP now for one year and it has been a great little car.

Welcome !
Nice to see a fellow up CNG driver

I've done 23000km with average CNG consumption of 2.7kg/100km

I suspect you have High-energy H-Gas ?

which is 0.2 under the spec 2.9kg (which just jumped to 3.8kg with the new WLTP standard.)

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

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

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

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 ?

[euromodder]

Originally Posted by oil pan 4

How do they make the bio gas into sellable fuel?

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 ...

In the united states bio gas is almost always made and burned on site to fire a boiler at an industrial plant.

Happens often in Europe as well, but is inefficient.

If you had a home fill station, it would cost almost nothing to fill up.

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

11kg is a lot, I had to assume that a car would probably hold around 5 to no more than 8kg.

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