VW drives its blue message

Volkswagen is stepping up its ‘Think Blue’ marketing campaign, launched earlier this year, as it bids to become the world’s most environmentally friendly carmaker.

In addition to launching ’blue coaching’ to encourage company staff to drive more efficiently, Think Blue now incorporates the company’s alternative fuel technologies as an extension to its Bluemotion brand.

Bluemotion Technologies becomes the umbrella brand under which Bluemotion will signify the most fuel efficient car in a model range.

Bluemotion Technology will be an options package added to a model to reduce its CO2 emissions, while
Blue TDI will denote lower NOx emissions on diesel cars thanks to exhaust gas after treatment.

Eco fuel cars will feature compressed natural gas (CNG). Initially, this will not be available in every European market, although Volkswagen is considering a full roll-out.

The company claims that CNG reduces carbon monoxide emissions by 75%, NOx by 60%, hydrocarbons
by 40% and CO2 by 20% compared
to diesel.

Multifuel is the name Volkswagen has given to cars that can run on ethanol – the new Passat will be available as a Multifuel car – while Sunfuel will be used for models running on sustainable biofuels.

The company says it is now focusing on lifecycle environment performance. The Passat illustrates this policy – the carbon output of the 1.4 TSI Bluemotion is 15% lower than the outgoing model.

Meanwhile, the Passat CC and Scirocco now have Bluemotion versions with both featuring start/stop and regenerative braking.

It improves fuel efficiency for the 2.0-litre TDI 140PS Scirocco from 55.4mpg to 62.8mpg, while CO2 falls from 134g/km to 118g/km, a drop of two tax brackets for company car drivers. The 2.0-litre TDI 140PS Passat CC’s fuel efficiency rises from 50.4mpg to 60.1mpg, while CO2 drops from 146g/km to 125g/km.