Volkswagen Shows Off Advanced Fuels Vehicles

Volkswagen of America is showing off advanced fuels models of some VW cars at the Designing Sustainable Mobility Summit, being held at Art Center College of Design in Southern California.

Summit attendees and Art Center students are being provided the experience of driving VW models running on biodiesel, ultra low sulfur diesel, hydrogen, and highly efficient gasoline engines on public roads.

"It's important to demonstrate that raising the bar in such important areas as fuel efficiency and emissions reduction isn't just accomplished with exotic or future-oriented technologies," says Ron Cogan, editor and publisher of the Green Car Journal, which is hosting the summit's ride-and-drive. "Volkswagen's demonstration of its clean diesel and twincharger engines provides real-world examples of environmentally positive technologies that are operating on highways today."

At the event's Green Cars/Pasadena ride-and-drive, VW is fielding a Touareg V-10 TDI running on B5 biodiesel, a mixture of conventional ultralow sulfur diesel (ULSD) fuel and renewable biodiesel. Diesel fuel that includes a mix of biodiesel burns cleaner and also helps displace fossil fuel use, contributing to energy diversity. VW has extended warranty protection to its models operating on B5 biodiesel as a way to encourage use of this cleaner fuel.

An advance look is also being offered of a highly efficient, twincharger gasoline engine Jetta in development. This Jetta's TSI engine provides higher power output from a smaller displacement engine while also achieving greater fuel efficiency and lower emissions. The TSI is popular in Europe and now is being considered for use in the U.S. It uses asupercharger to provide engine boost at lower rpms and an exhaust-driven turbocharger at mid-range rpms and higher.

At the summit, VW's Touran HyMotion hydrogen fuel cell vehicle not only shows Volkswagen's interest in this zero-emission fuel, but also showcases the company's breakthrough high-temperature fuel cell.

A decade of VW hydrogen vehicle development has led to a high-temperature fuel cell that provides a more compact, lighter, and more durable fuel cell system. This technology holds great promise to make fuel cell powertrains more economical, key to future mass production, the automaker says.


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DaimlerChrysler Chief Highlights Next-Gen Biodiesel Vehicles

The international head of automaker DaimlerChrysler is calling U.S. attention to his company's new line of cleaner diesel vehicles to improve fuel efficiency and reduce emissions.

Today at the Washington (D.C.) Auto Show, Dieter Zetsche, chairman of the board of management of DaimlerChrysler AG and the head of Mercedes Car Group, called attention to the new generation of clean diesels -- branded BLUETEC-- while encouraging U.S. lawmakers to set regulations that support adiversity of approaches to reducing the country's dependence on foreign oil.

To emphasize the point, he introduced the 2007 Dodge Ram 2500 and 3500 with 6.7-liter Cummins turbodiesel engine offered with B5 and B20 biodiesel, available to consumers in March. The first to do so and three years before the deadline, the heavy duty truck will meet stringent 2010 truck emissions standards in all 50 states, the automaker says. He also announced the Dodge Ramclean, light-duty turbodiesel engine that will provide up to 30-percent improved fuel economy, meet 50-state, 2010 emissions standards, availableafter 2009. With fuel economy improvements of 20 to 40 percent and a reduction of oxides of nitrogen (NOx) by as much as 90 percent, Zetsche stressed that clean diesel technology is a viable solution to reducing dependence on oil and improving air quality.

Zetsche also urged U.S. policymakers to stimulate greater demand and consumer choice for fuel-saving technologies --such as diesel -- by providing equal incentives on powertrains that achieve lower fuel consumption with clean emissions.

"American policy-makers must adopt a new and unique formula ... that encourages more technologies and more [customer] choice," says Zetsche."I've always thought CAFE -- in the country that is the world's model for a free- market economy -- to be a bit of a contradiction. It's an attempt to regulate supply and not to use market forces to stimulate demand for more fuel- efficient vehicles."

Zetsche says that "trying to sell people what they don't want is not a winnable business proposition. And it is that 'anti-free market element' of CAFE that makes life difficult for us. We've learned to live with CAFE and its modest increases."

Zetsche says that the automotive companies should "look toinnovation, and to increasingly substituting petroleum products with biofuels." He pointed to the modern diesel engine which has "plenty of the former, and great potential for the latter."

The Mercedes brand has been pioneering BLUETEC in Europe, where it's been on the road for several years. Since 2005, the company has sold more than 40,000 BLUETEC Mercedes-Benz trucks and buses in Europe, "where they've performed exceptionally well in everyday heavy-duty service," adds Zetsche.

Mercedes-Benz intends to systematically broaden its BLUETEC portfolio. In addition to the recently introduced Mercedes E 320 BLUETEC, three additional BLUETEC models will join the line-up, the R-Class, the ML-Class and the GL Class that will all be assembled at the company's plant in Alabama.

He also says that DaimlerChrysler "is not pursuing diesel to the exclusion of other alternate fuel technologies." Zetsche lists many on-going initiatives including the company's fuel cell activities where DaimlerChrysler has invested more than $1 billion and has more fuel-cellvehicles on the road today than any other manufacturer.

BLUETEC represents the cleanest diesel vehicles in the world, accodring to the company. These next- generation vehicles meet the most stringent emissions regulationsworldwide, including emissions standards in all 50 U.S. states.

BLUETEC is the DaimlerChrysler-owned brand name that stands for the cleanest diesel engines in their respective classes, i.e., those that meet 50- state emissions standards, the automaker says. BLUETEC is just one of the many fuel saving technologies from DaimlerChrysler, including advanced gasoline, Flex-Fuel, hybrids and zero-emission fuel-cell vehicles, it adds.


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