Report: The VW Microbus to Return, Appeal to Hippies as EV

Details about the second vehicle in Volkswagen’s upcoming fleet of battery electric vehicles are slowly taking shape, and it looks like it will be a seven-passenger van based on the company’s historic microbus.

The second electric vehicle—call it the Electric Type 2, for simplicity’s sake—will share the MEB platform that underpins VW’s ID concept. That concept, which premiered at the Paris Auto Show, is the first car confirmed for the MEB platform.

Like the ID, the Electric Type 2, will power the rear wheels from an engine placed between those same wheels. Energy will come from flat batteries housed under the body.

The Electric Type 2, though, will be longer and wider than the ID to fit its seven passengers, and thus will be able to store more batteries. According to a report from Autocar, it will have a range of up to 500 km (310 miles).

Despite being bigger than the ID, the new microbus is rumored to be more than 15 inches smaller (from the outside) than the current Multivan. At 4,900 mm (193 inches), it’s only about 4 inches longer than the current Passat.

That jives with what VW has been saying about the MEB platform. Thanks to its layout—rear-engine with flat batteries—there’s more room inside for passengers, much like the original, air cooled VWs.

Just what it will look like remains to be seen, but Autocar reports that it will feature many microbus-like cues. That’s to say that it will have a vertical windshield, a bluff front, a straight back, and a curbside sliding door.

The Electric Type 2 would be the second of five EVs that VW has promised as the initial vehicles in its electric onslaught. As a result, it would be endowed with all of the companies latest infotainment and autonomous driving functions.

[source: Autocar]

The post Report: The VW Microbus to Return, Appeal to Hippies as EV appeared first on VWVortex.

from VWVortex http://ift.tt/2hvTUFF
via IFTTT

Comments

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...

Volkswagen Group Records Best Ever First-Half-of-Year Sales

With 5.5 million vehicles in customer hands after the first six months of 2018, the Volkswagen Group is seeing the best performance of its history. Group deliveries increased significantly in all core regions,” said Fred Kappler, head of sales for the Group. “Our core brands recorded strong growth in the first half year.” For the year-to-date, all of Volkswagen’s brands had sales bumps. MAN, SEAT, and Skoda led the sales charge with performances 24%, 17% and 11% better than the previous year. The big sellers, too, had strong sales periods, with Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles, Audi, and Volkswagen sales rising 3.5%, 4.5% and 6.3% respectively. That last figure is particularly good new for the board, since Volkswagen alone sold more than 3 million vehicles in the first half of 2018. As Kappler stated, the numbers are equally good when you break sales down by region. Brazil and Russia were the most improved markets (22% and 20%, respectively), while strong sales in Europe and China (u...

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...

Vorderman Volkswagen

Search This Blog