Skip to main content

VW Promises Proper Rs for I.D. Range

Volkswagen is going all in on electric cars and that means more than just retro models and more driving range. It also means performance, which Jost Capito, head of VW’s R department, promises will be worth waiting for.

“If we do an R electric car, then it will be a proper R, or else it wouldn’t make sense,” Capito told AutoCar.

Better yet, Capito promises that there’s a timeline in place for these products, albeit a loose one.

“We have an idea, based on what’s going on on the racing and production side, but we haven’t defined a date yet.” He told Autocar. “The development [in EV technology] is going too quick that. Every month you have changes. At some point, you have to say: this is what we want, define it and go for it.”

Back at Pikes Peak, Capito told VW Vortex that the I.D. R was better, from a development standpoint, than Formula E for electric performance cars.

“This is like racing 50, 60 years ago,” he told us then. “You start with something that is impractical in the real world and you work on it until it becomes practical.”

According to Capito, the I.D. R program made leaps and strides in working out the compromise between power and range. You may remember that the I.D. R only had enough battery capacity to get it 80% of the way up Pikes Peak, but that it would get the rest of the power through braking on the way up.

That decision involved deciding how much weight the team thought it could afford, how much power it thought it needed (because the motors were capable of making more than just 600 hp), and how far the brakes could carry it. It was a delicate balance, just like making a performance car for the road.

Selecting a model to turn into an R, therefore is complicated. “You need space for motors and batteries, and battery technology,” he told Autocar. “It’s more complex than in the past with performance engines.”

Although the I.D. hatchback is the clear, traditional choice, the I.D. Crozz’s space may make it an even more attractive option for Volkswagen R.

The post VW Promises Proper Rs for I.D. Range appeared first on VWVortex.



from VWVortex https://ift.tt/2OHssoT
via IFTTT

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

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...

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...

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...