While Volkswagen has been known for its cars friendly to 100 percent blends of biodiesel, it seems that the last couple of years of the German carmaker’s Turbocharged Direct Injection (TDI) line of vehicles must run at much lower blends.

This piece from EnergyDigital.com says that while VW’s Super Bowl ads were winners, the “upgraded” TDIs from 2009 and newer are losers when it comes to biodiesel, running just 5 percent of the green fuel:

What we have here is a classic example of environmental protection regulation backfiring. While it is absolutely necessary to ensure that industrial practices are as minimally destructive to the environment as possible, it is also counterintuitive when the regulations created actually promote increased fossil fuel consumption over biofuels. Several TDI aficionados have expressed their disappointment in the new TDI engines in blogs and Internet comment boards, even forming grassroots associations calling for biodiesel-compatible TDI engines to return to VW’s lineup. There were several instances in 2009 where buyers of the new TDIs were uninformed of the engine’s inability to use higher blend biodiesel—the whole reason they bought the car in the first place! VW is currently in the process of approving the new TDI engines for B20 biodiesel blends, but true-blooded biodiesel supporters—the “B100 or nothing” crew—are turning to older TDI models to get their biofuel fix.

Hmmm… maybe we can get that little Darth Vader kid to fix this problem (he won the Super Bowl ads competition as the most creative of the night, right?).