VW To Be The Biggest Electric Car Maker...

5 year old auto plants tend to have the best quality. The workers are trained and the equipment fairly good and new. Old plants and first year of production have the lowest quality. I thought vw's quality was not much different between Europe and the US, but the dealer network was quite different getting initial quality fixed faster. GM for a time had its highest quality plant in mexico, with workers getting a relatively good wage compared to people in their city, versus disgruntaled older workers in US factories. Reliability not initial quality has nothing to do with the factory, that has to do with design.

How Volkswagen Will Rule The World - Forbes

Volkswagen Plans For World Domination - Motor Trend

 

Supercharger | Tesla Motors
VW will have to contend with Tesla, unstoppable with its free supercharger travel network and with less expensive models in the future.

I would then bet on GM, with new cars like Cadillac ATS, CTS, 2014 Cadillac CTS | First Drive Review - Consumer Reports News

And Chevy Volt is ready; just need more battery. Then Ford, Nissan, Toyota, Honda, Hyundai, etc... will not stand still!

 

I really doubt VW will ever make any ground as an EV maker honestly.

 

Yes, you are in fact using NEDC and not doing an apples-to-apples comparison.

The 118 mpg (US) is a NEDC test number. The EPA hasn't rated the XL1. So why are you using an EPA 50 mpg as the Prius comparison value? The comparable Prius NEDC number is about 60-61 mpg (US), I think.

 

I think we have gotten to the navel contemplation area here.

Is 118 mpg in a 2 seater worse than 61 mpg in a 5 seater. Hmm. When more than 2 need to ride is there another vehicle available? If there there is not another car around and this situation happens often, then don't buy the 2 seater. Otherwise N is the number of miles per year, M is the number of miles 3 to 5 seats are needed, and Y is mpg of other choice (either the bigger car, or combined mpg of taking too cars) then N/61 is the relative number of gallons in the prius while (N-M)/118 + M/Y is the relative gallons in the XL1 adjusted for using anouther vehicle. It is hard to believe this number of gallons will be worse and the driver will have chosen the XL1 to save oil. Actually its hard for me to believe anyone will choose the XL1 to save oil over say a tesla model S fueled by solar or wind. The XL1 is going to be a collectible car that is truely unique.

QED. The XL1 is more efficient, but no one will buy it to save oil

 

Umm......no.
Read:
120 MPG and Room for Two: VW’s XL1 Hitting the Streets in 2013 - Yahoo Autos

2nd paragraph:
"the XL1 can go 32 miles purely on batteries, after which the internal combustion kicks in. Even in that mode the car is expected to achieve 120 MPG, more than doubling the goals set by Uncle Sam’s CAFÉ standards and doing so more than a decade ahead of the deadline."

Let's be very clear about what we are talking about here:
The XL1 is based on VW's 6-year effort to deliver a "1-liter car", or 1 liter of fuel consumption per 100 km .
That translates to 236 mpg. Early version of the car could do that WITHOUT any sort of battery:
Volkswagen 1-litre car - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia





I will quote here directly from Wikipedia, 2nd paragraph:

The Volkwagen XL1 plug-in diesel-electric hybrid will be available only in Europe and it can deliver an all-electric range of 50 km (31 mi), has a fuel economy of 0.9 l/100 km (260 mpg-US; 310 mpg-imp) under the NEDC cycle and produces emissions of 21 g/km of CO2.[3]

If we adjust NEDC to EPA, then we get far better than 118 mpg, but then again that wasn't what I was referring to.........

We were discussing how much MPG would be after batteries are depleted.
100-120 mpg in ICE mode is perfectly consistent for a car that:

- Weighs less than 1700 pounds
- Has a Coefficient of Drag, Cd = .1869 (less than the EV1)
- Has a 0.8 liter Diesel engine w./ 7-speed dual-clutch transmission

We will never get the EPA tests since the XL1 will only be sold in Europe, so we can only give our best guess.

The debate was whether the XL1 would have less oil consumption than a Prius per-passenger-mile on a sustained, long road trip w/o assist fr. the battery. I tried to show that would be impossible unless the Prius had 5 people in it.

For shorter trips, (<31 miles) the XL1 would be an EV just like the Volt.........but with far superior electrical efficiency (Wh/mile) due to the above factors

 

I agree w./ your earlier post that this is not where the EV market is heading.

However:

This makes sense as a future path for VW given their strength in diesels.

Tesla: Roadster-------------->Model S
VW: XL1-------------------->???????

Whatever it is, I think it'll be a formidable competitor, probably unbeatable on the highway

 

VW itself seems to believe in gasoline phevs. This 2 cyclinder diesel is an engineering exercise. The additional cost and weight of diesel engines is a poor trade off in a volume production light weight phev. They bought porsche, which favors gasoline hybrids and phevs over diesel. The 918 really is the engineering masterpiece of the vw group, but the xl1 was developed before porsche was part of the group, and it deserves to see the light of day.

In heavier vehicles then diesel hybrid or phev may make more sense. vw's 1.4L in the jetta hybrid would make more sense in this car, if it were going into volume production. It would not add any weight, would probably only hurt fuel efficiency by 25%, but it would allow the car to accelerate much faster. It also would be less expensive and smoother. That would no longer be a 1 liter car though.

 

You all forget that diesel fuel can be upto 30% cheaper to buy than petrol in some European Countries.

That might be why the French and Germans keep pushing the horrible stuff.

 

My reply to your previous response was about your comparison of a NEDC test with the XL1 on an empty battery (118 mpg) with a non-NEDC test for the Prius (50 mpg) -- a result which actually came from EPA test rules.

You originally said:

You got 2.36 gallons for the Prius by dividing 118 (a NEDC number) by 50 mpg (an EPA number) when you should have divided 118 by 61 mpg (the Prius NEDC number). That was an unreasonable comparison.

Moving on....You can't "adjust NEDC to EPA, then we get far better than 118 mpg". That's bogus. You're now using the 260-261 mpg NEDC test estimate which includes the use of the fully charged battery.

NEDC publishes multiple test estimates for a plugin car like the Volt or XL1. The 261 mpg NEDC result includes the use of a fully charged battery. The 118 mpg NEDC result excludes using a charged battery. Both 261 and 118 are NEDC results for the XL1 just like the Chevrolet Volt got results of 196 mpg with a charged battery and 47 mpg excluding a charged battery under the same NEDC test rules.

The XL1 got 261 vs. the Volt's 196 because of the XL1's excellent Diesel efficiency in spite of the fact that it's battery range lasted for only 32 miles versus 52 miles for the Volt.

You are mixing and matching different NEDC and EPA tests in a way that doesn't make sense.

If you really want to guess at what the EPA equivalent to the XL1's NEDC 118 mpg might be then multiply it by about 0.8 and you get around 94 mpg as a rough approximation.

As far as the earlier prototype versions of the XL1 they were significantly smaller, much lighter and had weaker performance than the production version so it isn't surprising they were even more efficient than the final version.

The original prototype that got .99L per 100km (238 mpg) without a battery weighed only 290 kg (639 pounds) and had only a one cylinder engine that produced 6.3 kW (8.4 HP). That was an engineering toy.

The final production unit weighs 795 kg (1750 pounds) and has a 3 cylinder engine that produces 35 kW (47 HP) and gets 118 mpg NEDC.

 

I'm not even thinking of that. Although, I did not know it was 30% less, I thought it was a smaller difference than that.

Its just that one problem of getting people in hybrids and phevs is price. Diesels add to that price, and increase maintenance (dpf and urea), and this gets worse with Euro 6. The hybrid premium added to the diesel premium is a hard sell. For a performance car it gets worse, as diesel adds even more costs to get a similar level of performance, yes it can get done, but it is not cheap.

For example for the bmw i8 to get the same horsepower out of a diesel as they do out of the 3cylinder di gasoline engine, they would need to step up to a 6 cyclinder diesel. That adds weight so they would need to change the suspension set up, and add even more hp to get the same acceleration. I can't imagine many people would pay that premium for the lower diesel fuel costs, and efficiency may actually be worse as the electric miles would need to contend with the extra weight.

 

Fair enough.
94 mpg -without battery power- still makes one hell of a highway cruiser
Enough for 2 people to go from San Francisco to Vegas on 6 gallons of diesel.
Now, about that price.............

 

Then, not half the emission, he?

 

This "practical" 2-seater also reminds me of the 1Gen Honda Insight, I think VW has to look carefully what happened to Honda about this miraculous car and its awesome recordbreaking MPG.
Nevertheless, one can buy a used XL1 in late 2025, for a very attractive price, about 20 times lower. But with a 2cyl TDI (I have driven a 3cyl TDI and I know what I'm saying... ) you might want to plug-in as long as possible, Insight smashes in comfort, NVH and possible mechn/electric niggles...
Here's a coupe of nice 1Gen Insights for sale in Europe:
Honda Insight ZE1 als Kleinwagen in Desloch
Honda Insight als Sportwagen/Coupé in Brno

Both are more expensive than contemporary 1Gen Prii, rarity pumps up price perhaps?

 

What Pruis is less reliable then the other two? There is not one Toyota, Scion or Lexus that I am aware of that has reliability issues!

 

Then sir, you haven't read some of my previous posts over the last 3 years!

New inverter and a new ECU. Hybrid system errors. Toyota have handled things well - even outside of warranty, but I did not expect a Toyota to be as bad as mine has been. Even my Peugeot was better and that's saying something.

 

Still have my Pug 505! Good car as well. I have never had any issues with any Toy that i have owned!

 

51.69%, to be precise.


(using 61 mpg Prius, 118 mpg XL1 NEDC #'s discussed above)

But it's all hypothetical speculation. We will never know. EPA won't be testing this car.

 

You forgot to adjust for diesel's 15% higher carbon content. So, an XL1 on an empty battery would emit about 59% of the CO2 of a Prius. Or, stated another way, a Prius would emit about 1.68 times the CO2 of an XL1.

 

Again we are at navel contemplation. Isn't 59% a great number? It doesn't count the electric miles that say could come from renewables. Say you are 45% renewable miles, and 55% gasoline miles, then it would only produce 33% of the ghg as a prius.

Then again, I don't even think vw will even lead in germany, let alone the world.
Mercedes B-class Electric Drive: Built for Americans | PluginCars.com
Add to this the smart, the bmw i3 and i8. VW has a lot of catching up to do.