Citroën launches natural gas-powered C3
Citroën has decided to adapt the middle model of the C3 lineup to run on compressed natural gas (CNG). The CNG version manages to reduce by 18 percent the amount of CO2 produced by km compared to the 1.4l gasoline engined C3. Specifically, the C3 produces 159 g/km when running on unleaded and just 119 g/km when running on CNG. The C3 has 75 HP (68 running on CNG) and still manages to make 36 mpg (U.S.) on the EU mixed cycle when running on unleaded. A fully-equipped C3 costs about €16,000 in France, where only 50 CNG stations exist. The target market here is clearly Germany.
[Source: Citroën via Leblogauto]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Joseph 9:25PM (6/03/2008)
This car reminds me of the Audi A2.
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Sam 3:45AM (6/04/2008)
Well, this blog post seems to me quite funny - I have been driving a Citroën C3 CNG since last year (december 2007). And even then, the car we bought wasn't new. So, clearly Citroën has already released that car a long time ago.
Here in Switzerland there are enough CNG stations - and since the car also runs on normal unleaded and takes about 35 L of that, it is no problem to drive it in areas without CNG stations.
We were sponsored by the local gas station and can fill up $500 worth of CNG for free every year for 3 years. In addition to that, we got paid out $900 in cash to have three small "natural gas" stickers on the car.
I blogged a picture of the car with the really small stickers here:
http://www.steinis.ch/index.php/2007/12/25/jetzt-erdgas/
(already in december 2007, text in german)
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Karl-Uwe Strunzen 3:54AM (6/04/2008)
Is the CO2 figure correct? Citroen are now churning out much larger cars (C5) without CNG with a LOWER CO2 rate than this....
Why is Germany the target market? Foreign cars are hardly sold at all in Germany. There are, for example, a similar number of CNG cars in Poland, where car sales are skyrocketing and where people alo buy cars no produced nationally. And for every CNG car on Germany today, there are 20in Italy.
In any case this is good news. This is much better than the biofuel "business"....
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Jeff Stokes 9:34AM (6/05/2008)
We need natural gas cars in the U.S. All Honda makes one. Lets make all postal vechicles, police cars etc. cng cars. We have enough natural gas in AMerica for 100 years!
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