China has already solved the range problem by speeding up charging. When you can recharge 5 hours of highway driving in range during a 5-minute bathroom stop, an additional few hundred miles just isn't that useful anymore.
You could also go the other way and use the improved range to shrink the battery, but with the ongoing battery cost drop that's not exactly a gamechanger either - and fast-charging long-range Chinese EVs are available for their domestic market for a fraction of the cost of entry-level Western models as well...
Don't get me wrong, improving aerodynamics is a nice goal, but with the ongoing push towards gigantic SUVs there's zero chance anything even remotely resembling this concept car will ever see the light of day.
I partially agree, but this doesn’t totally address the range issue. There are big sections of the western US (for example) where the existing EV ranges are a dealbreaker.
> There are big sections of the western US (for example) where the existing EV ranges are a dealbreaker
Where? I live in Wyoming. The folks who have EVs around me are doing fine–there aren't many public chargers, but there aren't many places the public is randomly going. If you're travelling on a highway, you're passing chargers about half as regularly as you're passing gas stations.
My next vehicle will be an EV. (I'm waiting for non-Tesla self driving to get a bit better.)
The western states are fairly well served by interstates, and all the interstates are now well served by chargers. Obviously there are routes that don't use interstates that aren't served, but in the continental US there is no spot that is more than 150 miles from a charger.
True, but as an EV driver I feel more comfortable when there are a couple of chargers available in an area — I run into too many chargers which aren’t working to enjoy relying on a single option.
Yes the Chinese have better infrastructure. Probably even better technology out in production available to them at this point. But so what? I mean it's great for the rest of the world. And that's awesome. But how are we plebes in the US ever gonna get access to those vehicles?
It's not as simple an issue as people make it out to be here in the US.
I strongly believe these announcements are simply performance art for the capital markets to keep the share price higher than fundamentals would dictate.
Great, you've designed and prototyped the vehicle. When will they be built at the rate BYD and other Chinese automakers are building EVs? Until then, it's vaporware. All that matters is deliveries (China EV manufacturing is currently at a run rate exporting ~3M more EVs per year than VW sells in a year entirely regardless of powertrain [~9M]).
>It’s also the most efficient EV in its class, consuming just 6.89 kWh/100 km without charging losses.
>The VW Mission Efficiency covered 1,278 km (794 miles) on a single charge and still had 164 km (102 miles) of range left at the end of the trip.
But at 6.89kWh/100km for a 1278km trip equals 88kWh battery and it is stated later that the battery is a 54.9kWh one and that was recharged during the journey.
> The 54.9-kWh net battery was recharged only once during the journey....
It would be nice to have an article that makes sense from time to time...
I regularly drive 450+ miles to a family camp and need to stop at least once just to stretch my legs/change drivers/eat. The drive can take anywhere from 7-9 hours depending on traffic. 900 miles range is cool but it's not worth a huge price premium. Sort of like the Concord; while it's technically possible it's not worth the money.
Because they are very comfortable. I'm not saying people should be obsessed about them, but that's part of why they are paying premiums for SUVs. Driving higher on the road on a wide car has a strong appeal for most people.
Ironically, larger crossovers have been among the least comfortable cars I have driven. Sure, they are a tad higher so someone with knee issues can more easily get in, but it seems most of the extra space they take up is somehow wasted. If you care about your rear seat passengers or carrying capacity, station wagons are far superior.
The whole "higher on the road" thing is a red queen's race: if everyone is higher on the road, nobody is. You've got slightly better sight yourself until all the other people upsize, and in the meantime you are blocking everyone else's sight. Considering SUVs are more expensive, the only people winning are the car makers.
My little sister is a very petite woman, and drives a massive SUV, when I asked her why she said it makes her feel safer, I suppose that is a form of comfort. I'm 6ft tall, and that's not particularly tall, but if I was a driver, I'd certainly consider the leg/head room of an SUV.
As someone who lives in an area of Europe replete with narrow roads between stone buildings... standard SUVs have grown ~20cm wider in the last decade, and it sucks
> Volkswagen just build the world's most aerodynamic road car ever.
A drag coefficient of 0.158 is not quite setting a record.
Aptera's road-legal car has a coefficient of only 0.13, while achieved a drag coefficient of 0.144 with the Aero Challenge concept car [1] (but it's not clear whether that vehicle is road-legal, or even what it looks like).
This just makes the Tesla Model S P90D, from 14 years ago, just look even better. 509km range (in the lab) and incredible acceleration, and looks pretty normal and practical. And it doesn't make you bring your own phone and bluetooth speaker for infotainment.
Waymo should call up Volkswagen and place an order to ensure it goes into production.
Waymo should have a mixed fleet of 2 adult passenger vehicles like this one, 4-5 passenger models as well as some vans. It'll save them a lot of money, and will make streets safer by normalizing small vehicles.
Maybe they learned from their blunder with the ID Buzz. At this point though I simply don't trust any legacy automaker when it comes to producing and supporting EVs for their lifetime.
Why don't we just build high speed electrified rail and busses. Why this rollout of electrified golf carts? My car is fast and fun to drive, that's part of it's job alongside getting me where I need to go.
If I just need to get somewhere, I want to take a clean fast train like Japan and then walk.
Is this implication here that you think this car is an electrified golf cart? What makes you think that it wouldn't be fast or fun to drive? Most electric cars are extremely fun to drive due to their extremely high acceleration.
The development and building of newer, more efficient electric vehicles does not preclude the investment in more high speed electrified rail and busses. That complaint is a non-sequitor.
That depends on your definition of "fun to drive". Flooring it loses its charm within a week, and with the additional weight most EVs are awful when it comes to taking corners at speed.
EVs might be fun for drag racing, but if you want to drive on a circuit ICE is still the better option for now.
That /just/ is bearing a lot of weight there. And what is Volkswagen going to do to build highspeed rail, they're a car company so they're making cars...
The US is trapped in a local maximum due to history, geography and finally politics. There's a lot of local resistance specifically to highspeed rail because to stay highspeed the trains usually bypass smaller local towns so they don't get the benefit but all the negatives of it's construction.
More and more buses in my local mass transit system have moved to EV's (these specifically https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wright_GB_Kite) as they age out their older buses and build out the infrastructure they needed.
I like them, they are smoother and quieter than the ones they replaced (in fairness that was the oldest diesel buses mostly), I don't like the new on board announcement "Next stop <X>, You are at <X>" style but that's because I'm not partially sighted/blind and it's a small price for making life a lot easier for those folks (and headphones exist).
Why can't an electric car be fun to drive? I have an old car I'm not planning on changing but electric cars I've driven just seem quieter, smoother and just better than ICE vehicles.
How on earth would that work in Houston? Why on earth would people want to arrive at any destination soaked in sweat? Everyday on here someone makes a tendentious post about the viability of public transit.
China has already solved the range problem by speeding up charging. When you can recharge 5 hours of highway driving in range during a 5-minute bathroom stop, an additional few hundred miles just isn't that useful anymore.
You could also go the other way and use the improved range to shrink the battery, but with the ongoing battery cost drop that's not exactly a gamechanger either - and fast-charging long-range Chinese EVs are available for their domestic market for a fraction of the cost of entry-level Western models as well...
Don't get me wrong, improving aerodynamics is a nice goal, but with the ongoing push towards gigantic SUVs there's zero chance anything even remotely resembling this concept car will ever see the light of day.
> with the ongoing push towards gigantic SUVs
this is not a global thing.
I partially agree, but this doesn’t totally address the range issue. There are big sections of the western US (for example) where the existing EV ranges are a dealbreaker.
> There are big sections of the western US (for example) where the existing EV ranges are a dealbreaker
Where? I live in Wyoming. The folks who have EVs around me are doing fine–there aren't many public chargers, but there aren't many places the public is randomly going. If you're travelling on a highway, you're passing chargers about half as regularly as you're passing gas stations.
My next vehicle will be an EV. (I'm waiting for non-Tesla self driving to get a bit better.)
The western states are fairly well served by interstates, and all the interstates are now well served by chargers. Obviously there are routes that don't use interstates that aren't served, but in the continental US there is no spot that is more than 150 miles from a charger.
True, but as an EV driver I feel more comfortable when there are a couple of chargers available in an area — I run into too many chargers which aren’t working to enjoy relying on a single option.
I partially agree for a different reason.
Yes the Chinese have better infrastructure. Probably even better technology out in production available to them at this point. But so what? I mean it's great for the rest of the world. And that's awesome. But how are we plebes in the US ever gonna get access to those vehicles?
It's not as simple an issue as people make it out to be here in the US.
I strongly believe these announcements are simply performance art for the capital markets to keep the share price higher than fundamentals would dictate.
Great, you've designed and prototyped the vehicle. When will they be built at the rate BYD and other Chinese automakers are building EVs? Until then, it's vaporware. All that matters is deliveries (China EV manufacturing is currently at a run rate exporting ~3M more EVs per year than VW sells in a year entirely regardless of powertrain [~9M]).
It is stated that this was a single charge trip
>It’s also the most efficient EV in its class, consuming just 6.89 kWh/100 km without charging losses. >The VW Mission Efficiency covered 1,278 km (794 miles) on a single charge and still had 164 km (102 miles) of range left at the end of the trip.
But at 6.89kWh/100km for a 1278km trip equals 88kWh battery and it is stated later that the battery is a 54.9kWh one and that was recharged during the journey.
> The 54.9-kWh net battery was recharged only once during the journey....
It would be nice to have an article that makes sense from time to time...
They did something very similar 20+ years ago called XL1 to achieve 1l/100km, never made it into production. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/VW_XL1
Based on the battery of 55kWh this is about efficiency, not packing more batteries:
> 6.48 kWh/100 km
At a constant 68km/h in perfect conditions (no up/down) and no additional consumers of energy (climate control).
Even on a real route they apparently got some useful stats with 7.51 kWh/100km including charging. Cool.
My car is around 17-20 kWh/100km at a 64kWh battery for a medium cost car in germany. I wish it was even close to that efficiency.
I regularly drive 450+ miles to a family camp and need to stop at least once just to stretch my legs/change drivers/eat. The drive can take anywhere from 7-9 hours depending on traffic. 900 miles range is cool but it's not worth a huge price premium. Sort of like the Concord; while it's technically possible it's not worth the money.
Sign me up for all of these innovations in an actual production car. No idea why the whole market seems to be obsessed with ever-wider SUVs...
Because they are very comfortable. I'm not saying people should be obsessed about them, but that's part of why they are paying premiums for SUVs. Driving higher on the road on a wide car has a strong appeal for most people.
Ironically, larger crossovers have been among the least comfortable cars I have driven. Sure, they are a tad higher so someone with knee issues can more easily get in, but it seems most of the extra space they take up is somehow wasted. If you care about your rear seat passengers or carrying capacity, station wagons are far superior.
The whole "higher on the road" thing is a red queen's race: if everyone is higher on the road, nobody is. You've got slightly better sight yourself until all the other people upsize, and in the meantime you are blocking everyone else's sight. Considering SUVs are more expensive, the only people winning are the car makers.
A minivan has both high seating and tons of cargo space, after you remove the middle seats and fold the back ones.
There's more usable space in station wagons, as a rule. And personally, if I'm cornering hard, I prefer to be closer to the road, not higher up...
>Most people
Did you mean fat people?
I'm curious to know if the evolution of the average car size tracks obesity.
My little sister is a very petite woman, and drives a massive SUV, when I asked her why she said it makes her feel safer, I suppose that is a form of comfort. I'm 6ft tall, and that's not particularly tall, but if I was a driver, I'd certainly consider the leg/head room of an SUV.
As someone who lives in an area of Europe replete with narrow roads between stone buildings... standard SUVs have grown ~20cm wider in the last decade, and it sucks
Let's hope aerodynamics can save us from SUV disease
Somehow it looks cool for a movie, but ugly for real life.
> Volkswagen just build the world's most aerodynamic road car ever.
A drag coefficient of 0.158 is not quite setting a record. Aptera's road-legal car has a coefficient of only 0.13, while achieved a drag coefficient of 0.144 with the Aero Challenge concept car [1] (but it's not clear whether that vehicle is road-legal, or even what it looks like).
[1] https://www.azernews.az/region/245135.html
Aptera is even more vaporware-y than this though.
Shape reminds me a lot of the first gen Honda Insight - also built to be low drag.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honda_Insight#First_generation...
This just makes the Tesla Model S P90D, from 14 years ago, just look even better. 509km range (in the lab) and incredible acceleration, and looks pretty normal and practical. And it doesn't make you bring your own phone and bluetooth speaker for infotainment.
Perhaps better info on VWs own press release:
https://www.volkswagen-newsroom.com/en/press-releases/missio...
This is concept car that has no planned release date.
Waymo should call up Volkswagen and place an order to ensure it goes into production.
Waymo should have a mixed fleet of 2 adult passenger vehicles like this one, 4-5 passenger models as well as some vans. It'll save them a lot of money, and will make streets safer by normalizing small vehicles.
That's 9 miles/kWh, compared to the Cybercab's 6.1 miles/kWh, compared to a typical EV at 3-4 miles/kWh.
Part of the difference may come from using the easier WLTP testing cycle than the EPA cycle the Cybercab probably uses, but only part.
what do you call a dieselgate for ev? hmm
coool interior and aero. all of the hyper efficient designs end up looking like the modern prius designs with the swan tail rear and hawk-beak nose.
Maybe they learned from their blunder with the ID Buzz. At this point though I simply don't trust any legacy automaker when it comes to producing and supporting EVs for their lifetime.
What do you do when your rear tyre gets a flat?
The panel over them called a fender skirt comes off usually, this is far from the first car with skirts or spats. They used to be quite popular.
Bring back wheel covers!
And with barely three millimeters of clearance you can effectively sweep the roads while you drive!
Wake us up when it can safely navigate a speed bump or enter a driveway without smashing against the bottom.
don't get me wrong but VW is dead already.
Why don't we just build high speed electrified rail and busses. Why this rollout of electrified golf carts? My car is fast and fun to drive, that's part of it's job alongside getting me where I need to go.
If I just need to get somewhere, I want to take a clean fast train like Japan and then walk.
Is this implication here that you think this car is an electrified golf cart? What makes you think that it wouldn't be fast or fun to drive? Most electric cars are extremely fun to drive due to their extremely high acceleration.
The development and building of newer, more efficient electric vehicles does not preclude the investment in more high speed electrified rail and busses. That complaint is a non-sequitor.
That depends on your definition of "fun to drive". Flooring it loses its charm within a week, and with the additional weight most EVs are awful when it comes to taking corners at speed.
EVs might be fun for drag racing, but if you want to drive on a circuit ICE is still the better option for now.
That /just/ is bearing a lot of weight there. And what is Volkswagen going to do to build highspeed rail, they're a car company so they're making cars...
The US is trapped in a local maximum due to history, geography and finally politics. There's a lot of local resistance specifically to highspeed rail because to stay highspeed the trains usually bypass smaller local towns so they don't get the benefit but all the negatives of it's construction.
More and more buses in my local mass transit system have moved to EV's (these specifically https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wright_GB_Kite) as they age out their older buses and build out the infrastructure they needed.
I like them, they are smoother and quieter than the ones they replaced (in fairness that was the oldest diesel buses mostly), I don't like the new on board announcement "Next stop <X>, You are at <X>" style but that's because I'm not partially sighted/blind and it's a small price for making life a lot easier for those folks (and headphones exist).
Why can't an electric car be fun to drive? I have an old car I'm not planning on changing but electric cars I've driven just seem quieter, smoother and just better than ICE vehicles.
> electrified golf carts
I'm not clear how something that ran up to 138 kmph (85 mph) during an (intentionally low-speed) efficiency test, would be equivalent to a golf cart?
How on earth would that work in Houston? Why on earth would people want to arrive at any destination soaked in sweat? Everyday on here someone makes a tendentious post about the viability of public transit.
"No way to do this", says only country not doing it yet.
What does that have to do with being soaked in sweat? I could understand if they suggested everyone get around by bike, but this is just silly.
Electric busses and trains can have quite powerful and good air conditioning systems.
The problem with this in Houston is the disgracefully stupid urban layout that makes it very hard to effectively serve the city with public transit.