CNG vans trump hybrids

Question: Is there room for hybrid technology in vans?

No, responds Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles Director, Phil Clark.

Integrating hybrid technology in commercial vehicles brings with it more than the usual conflicts associated with running two drive sources and two energy reservoirs. Commercial vehicle operators believe that payload is everything and the added weight and volume of hybrid-drive systems eats into their profit. That's why Clark is more in favour of CNG as a fuel for internal combustion engines powering commercial vehicles.

"If you asked my own personal opinion, I think that if we had the infrastructure CNG most probably could do quite well in Australia," he told the Carsales Network during a drive of Volkswagen's Transporter and Multivan 4Motion models in Germany last week.

"The problem is that a lot of the CNG [supply] is government-based -- Brisbane Council and people like that."

"Taxis are quite easy because they're [based] in the city, so you can set up CNG station.

"The segment that could do with it is the Caddy-sized segment -- city delivery vehicle. We'll never have the technology in the short to medium term to have CNG stations -- enough in the country -- to cater for people outside the city. In the city, I think there's an opportunity there, if people have it, for city delivery vehicles.

"I think that CNG, from a commercial vehicle perspective, is more likely to happen than hybrid."

Not only is Volkswagen a supporter of CNG in commercial vehicles, offering a CNG-fuelled Caddy in the latest model, but it joins other manufacturers such as Mercedes-Benz in the development of CNG as an alternative to diesel for commercial vehicles.

Between now and whenever hydrogen becomes a viable fuel for road transport -- assuming it does at some point in the future -- diesels and hybrids have a part to play in rationing the dwindling supply of fossil fuel, while reducing CO2 emissions at the same time. The advantage of CNG is that it is cleaner-burning than diesel and doesn't bring those weight and efficiency problems that hybrids face. As a non-renewable fuel, it should be many years before it hits its production peak.

But there's no economic impetus in Australia to develop the resupply infrastructure to support CNG vehicles. It's Clark's view that alternative fuels (and hybrid technology) will be slower to gain ground among commercial vehicle operators because they're burning diesel and the perception is that they're acting more responsibly than passenger-car owners in doing so.

"The fuel efficiency pressure hasn't been on vans [such as has] been on passenger vehicles in the first instance -- I'm talking fuel efficiency separate from emissions -- because the bulk of [commercial vehicle operators] weren't running petrol vans," he said.

So while we have huge reserves of CNG relative to our population base, we're not doing anything with those reserves for road transport at a retail level. And thus there's a good reason for Volkswagen not to bother importing the Caddy EcoFuel.

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