Taxi and Limousine Director at Mowasalat, Ali Abdullah Bahzad, General Manager of Q-Auto, Kevin Hughes, Business Development Manager at Mowasalat, Brett Subritzky, with other officials of Mowasalat and Q-Auto, pose near the CNG taxi at Mowasalat headquarters yesterday. Salim Matramkot
DOHA: Mowasalat yesterday launched its first “green taxi” fuelled by Compressed Natural Gas (CNG), as part of a plan to convert a major portion of its public transport vehicles to alternative fuel.
The company is operating two CNG-fuelled buses and has plans to convert another 70 buses to eco fuel by the end of this year.
The first Passat EcoFuel taxi was delivered by Q-Auto, dealers of Volkswagen cars in Qatar and is backed by Volkswagen’s “Think Blue” initiative.
“The vehicle is the first direct-injection turbo engine for the natural gas driving system emitting 23 percent less CO2 compared to similar petrol models,” said Antonio Leal, General Sales and Marketing, Q-Auto. The car will refuel from a specialised CNG filling station, reducing emissions by 39 percent over a comparable petrol vehicle.
The Passat EcoFuel is powered by a 1.4-litre TSI 110 kW (148 hp) engine running on either natural gas or petrol. The engine features both a supercharger and a turbocharger operating sequentially to provide relatively high power outputs from a small capacity engine.
The natural gas is stored in a trio of tanks with a combined capacity of 22kg mounted beneath the boot floor. This is supplemented by a 31-litre tank for conventional petrol. Between the two tanks the car offers a theoretical range of over 800km.
The Passat CNG has a top speed of 210 kmph and the capability to accelerate from 0 to 100 kmph in 9.7 seconds. In normal conditions the vehicle consumes 5.2kg of natural gas every 100km.
“We have 60 public buses ready to run on CNG but we need to develop the infrastructure, mainly the filling station to serve a larger fleet. We are working on this project, in collaboration with other bodies concerned,” Eng Ali Abdullah Bahzad, Director of Taxi and Limousine Department of Mowasalat said yesterday
Late last year, Mowasalat launched its first CNG bus in a pilot project supported by Qatar Petroleum, in line with directives of the Emir H H Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani for utilisation of CNG as a fuel in Qatar’s transport sector. The first CNG filling station in Qatar was opened in the Industrial Area last year as part of the project.
Mowasalat recently announced plans to establish a base to promote the use of clean energy and convert more vehicles to use CNG. CNG is considered a green fuel as it considerably reduces emissions of greenhouse gases.
CNG vehicles are quieter compared with diesel vehicles and contribute to reducing noise pollution.
The cost of CNG buses is high due to employing the most advanced technologies in their production and Mowasalat is planning to reduce the cost to levels similar to that of ordinary buses. The Peninsula
