Members of German initiative for natural gas mobility call for 20% biomethane in fuels by 2015

Sep 15, 2011 - The members of Germany's initiative for natural gas mobility, among which are vehicle manufacturers such as Daimler (ETR:DAI), Iveco Magirus and Volkswagen (ETR:VOW), have called for raising the share of biomethane in fuels over the next few years.

The companies want 20% of the natural gas used for transportation to be replaced with biomethane by 2015.

In order to avoid competition with the food industry, the automotive companies propose to raise the usage of waste materials in the biofuels' production. The number of natural gas filling stations will also have to be significantly increased from 900 currently.

Daimler, VW and Iveco also propose to launch more natural-gas driven models in the future, in a move to expand the share of such vehicles on the German market. The companies want to see the number of vehicles powered by natural gas grow to 1.4 million by 2020 from 90,000 at present.

VW and its subsidiary Audi (ETR:NSU) are already prepared to launch new natural gas cars -- VW will put its new model Up on the market and Audi will launch an natural gas version of the A3. Daimler's core brand Mercedes-Benz is planning to introduce a natural gas vehicle in its B-Class.

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