VW Debuts the Eco Up! Natural Gas Car (29% Less CO2 per Mile than the Prius)

Michael Graham Richard
Transportation / Cars
December 6, 2012

credit: VW

The regular VW Up! is a pretty frugal vehicle to begin with: It's powered by a 1.0-liter 3-cylinder engine that produces only 105 grams of CO2 per kilometer (to compare different fuels, it's better to use CO2 g/km than MPG), while the slightly tweaked BlueMotion version of the Up! going down to 96 g/km. But that's nothing compared to the new compressed natural gas (CNG) version that VW has just unveiled: 79 g/km of CO2, which beats the current generation Prius hybrid by 29%. Not bad, though to be fair, the Prius is a bigger vehicle. But the Eco Up! is sized perfectly as a small European city car.