Compressed Natural Gas, CNG, is currently widely used in some cities (such as Paris or Barcelona) to power public buses. Natural gas burns very clean and, although it still pollutes with CO2, it avoids the most of the rest of nasty by-products that come out of the tailpipe.

ERDGAS, the biggest natural gas company in Germany, is promoting intensively the use of Compressed Natural Gas with passenger vehicles, even offering home fueling stations linked to the normal gas distribution network. The bread&butter German brands, such as Volkswagen and Opel have a couple of models able to run with CNG at relatively low prices. There are fueling stations (sparse) around Germany, and even Erdgas offers a route planner that takes in consideration that CNG vehicles need to be refueled more times.

Availability is not that easy outside Germany and every country is different. In France, the national gas company, Gaz de France, allows consumers to install compressors to fill up the cars, but they take up to 9 hours. Carrefour announced some gas pump at their gas stations and PSA cars can be ordered with CNG options.

If you want to check a couple more of models and some more information about running a CNG in Europe, follow me through the jump.