BMW & Mercedes Benz sedans running on CNG in India!

Market for used luxury cars in India have increased in the last couple of years. There are more takers for used luxury cars mainly because of the pricing. One thing that people don’t realise while making such purchases is that it is still a luxury car and the cost of maintenance and running cost is much more than that of a regular car. For example a petrol powered luxury sedan will return a fuel efficiency of 10 kmpl or below which is too low. To tackle this issue, several alternatives are now available in the market and one such solution is installing CNG in luxury cars. Here we have a Mercedes-Benz C-Class and a BMW 3-series luxury sedan that is running on CNG fuel.

There are two videos here. First one has been uploaded by VarunSharma Auto&travel and the other one is by Gaurav Baaz. In the video, vlogger talks how an aftermarket CNG kit is installed in a supercharged Mercedes-Benz C-Class sedan. He talks about all the components that are being installed in the car and also has a conversation with the expert who is installing it.

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As usual, gas cylinder is installed in the boot. Unlike other cars, luxury cars come with large boots and that came in handy here. Even after installing a 14 kgs gas cylinder, there is decent amount of space for luggage left in the boot. The pipe for the gas goes under the body and comes out in the engine bay where filler nozzle and reducer are installed. The high pressure pipes are used to handle the pressure from gas. The filler nozzle is neatly placed at front of the bonnet.

Installing a CNG kit in a luxury car is a tricky job. The vlogger shows how neatly the installer brings out all the pipes and connects it to the injectors. mapping sensor, ECM, wiring harness are all installed in this C-Class sedan. Once the connections were secured, they were all tied using a tie to give the bonnet a neat look. After that, the ECU was programmed to work with CNG fuel and after that the installation process was finished.

In the next video, the vlogger shows a BMW 3-series sedan. Just like the Mercedes-Benz, BMW owner also found the fuel economy of the luxury sedan to be too low and so he decided to install CNG kit. It comes with a 6 cylinder engine and the car gets 6 injector for seamless power output. Gas cylinder was placed in the boot and the wiring and other work was also done. This dealer mentions that he initially checks the engine calibration and only after that he starts working on the car. The expert who installs the kit shows the reducer, fuel injectors, filler valve and other components in the car.

He mentions that the fuel efficiency in these cars increase after installing CNG kit. There is only a minor difference in the overall power out put when compared to petrol version. The BMW was offering 7 kmpl before installing the kit but, after the installation it will return around 12-14 kmpl depending upon the driving condition. Similarly in the Mercedes-Benz C Class, it returned a fuel efficiency of almost 19 kms per kilogram of gas.

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