Skip to main content

Volkswagen To Explore New Design For Its Electric Vehicles

The future generation of all-electric vehicles from VW will have a new design language that hasn’t been seen on any of the automaker’s cars.

With the introduction of its new family of all-electric vehicles, Volkswagen will be taking a fresh approach, reports Automotive News. The automaker’s head of design, Klaus Bischoff, said using battery packs allows VW to change the shape of its upcoming cars. According to the report, the cars will have shorter hoods, longer wheelbases, short overhangs, larger passenger compartments, more-raked windshields, and be taller.

While the I.D. family of cars will showcase VW’s new design language, the electric cars also pose challenges for the automaker’s designers. Electric vehicles, as the report points out, are usually taller than their gasoline-powered counterparts to accommodate for power cells that are mounted on the bottom of the car.

“To cope with that we need to correct proportions,” said Bischoff in Detroit earlier this month. “Essential for this huge wheels, huge in diameter – but also wide.”

Autodesk VRED Professional 2017 SP1

The correct proportions also include a small hood, which is due to the disappearance of the engine compartment, causing the A-pillar to shift forward. VW’s designers will now be able to drastically reduce the size of the hood and will use the piece to only meet crash regulations.

Range is another aspect that VW is looking to improve upon with its new designs. By utilizing a smaller hood, the automaker can use a windshield that is inclined at a steeper angle for better fluid dynamics, said Bischoff.

“To gain the travel distance – range is essential – we need to have outstanding drag coefficients, and this will also influence the shape of the cars quite a bit,” Bischoff said.

No overhangs will help VW increase the cars’ wheelbase, giving passengers more room on the inside. The report claims that the automaker’s designers have pushed the dashboard forward by five inches for even more legroom. “The I.D. has the interior space of a Passat [midsize] with a footprint smaller than the Golf,” said Bischoff.

While the design of the I.D. family sounds like a step in the right direction to have a unique vehicle that stands out on the road, Bischoff hinted towards taking a page out of Tesla’s book by doing away with the grille.

VW’s modern design will appear on the automaker’s first car in its new family of battery-electric vehicles with production set to start in 2020.

[source: Automotive News]

This article was first generated on hybridcars.com

The post Volkswagen To Explore New Design For Its Electric Vehicles appeared first on VWVortex.



from VWVortex http://ift.tt/2kWTm0B
via IFTTT
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

2018 Lamborghini Aventador S Roadster Review

“Supercars just don’t excite me anymore.” These words, spoken to me over a month ago by another journalist, friend, and (so-called) enthusiast were echoing in my head for far too long, but they’ve finally been drowned out. Drowned out by the wail of a naturally aspirated 6.5-liter V12 engine mounted in the middle of the new Lamborghini Aventador S Roadster. My friend’s point is that back in the good old days, there was a crop of supercars that captured the imagination with amazing style, sounds, performance, and more. Today, it seems like everything is capable of supercar performance, with large luxury sedans outdoing some of the best and most dedicated teams of car nuts, while former pillars of automotive excellence are suddenly pumping out family-friendly SUVs. Beyond that, another league of supercars, dubbed hypercars have cropped up with hybrid gas-electric powertrains that make magical things happen quickly, but at the cost of the acoustic drama, visual flair, and engag...
Post a Comment
Read more

Project SportWagen: Going Stage 2 with APR

    When we last left you, the humble little SportWagen was fresh from the development process with our friends at AWE Tuning, sporting a new downpipe, exhaust and intake, allowing things to breathe a bit easier.  The car sounded great, but there was no getting around the fact that our wagon was still quite, well, slow.   While we realize that nothing we do to the Golf SportWagen at this point will make it a race car, we still felt compelled to do something .  To put it bluntly, we had a fever, and the only cure was more power. Flash forward a few hours, and we found ourselves at Waterfest, staring down APR’s palatial spread and the numerous tuned vehicles surrounding it.  Earlier in the year, APR had hinted to us that their 1.8 TSI files would be quite impressive, and based on what they were able to do with the 2.0 TSI found in the new GTI and our time in their Golf R, we knew it’d be worth the wait.  So with this in mind, we lined our G...
Post a Comment
Read more

Project Golf SportWagen- Intro

I’ve never really been one for SUVs and crossovers.  The current offerings aren’t the body-on-frame, go-anywhere specialty tools I remember from my youth, and what they lack in capability, they also lack in on-road performance. The current crop isn’t terribly good at handling or being efficient, which in my opinion are major components of our ideal driving experience.  So when it comes to space or utility, I usually look for something of the wagon variety- and it seems that I’m not alone. We hit quite a few shows around the east coast each summer, and we see modified Jetta SportWagens at nearly every event. Even amongst common consumers, these cars are highly sought-after. They don’t depreciate much, making even early Mk 5 2.5 versions expensive in comparison to other Jettas or Golfs of the same vintage. This year, Volkswagen launched their latest SportWagen, which is now billed as a Golf.  In many ways, this latest SportWagen is the best yet and it has certai...
Post a Comment
Read more