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Volkswagen’s Powertrains of the Future - Features
In which we sample Volkswagen’s alternative fuels of today, tomorrow, and sometime late next week.
BY JARED GALL, January 2007
Recently we traveled to Valencia, Spain, to sample Volkswagen’s plans to stretch the usefulness of our remaining oil reserves, as well as to how to keep earthlings mobile when we suck our last drop from the planet.
Listening to some of VW’s engineers, one might think they expect this to happen sometime in the next thirteen minutes. We’re no environmental scientists, but we think we’re good until at least next Thursday. At least they’re planning ahead.
We had the opportunity to drive ten vehicles around Valencia’s “City of Arts and Sciences,” a beautiful complex of fountains, museums, and an opera house; an appropriately modern scene for cruising a selection of future-fuel vehicles and an assortment of vehicles leading the technology curve for European production models.
The mind-boggling array of vehicles present ran on six different fuels and included four different diesel-derivative engines: a current-production Polo BlueMotion diesel; a next-gen Jetta “Clean TDI” coming to the U.S. in ‘08 under the BlueTec banner; a New Beetle convertible running on SunFuel, a diesel fuel manufactured from biomass—plants, woodchips, and other forms of biological waste—and a Touran (think Mazda 5 tall wagon/mini-minivan) running VW’s Combined Combustion System (CCS), a mixture of gas and diesel that is said to burn more completely and is therefore cleaner than either fuel on its own. We also sampled two compressed natural gas (CNG) vehicles, a Touran and a Passat running VW’s new TSI turbo- and supercharged engine (this engine was also present in two gasoline trims); a half-baked hybrid Touran; and a Touran powered by a hydrogen fuel cell. It was a hectic afternoon. Read on for the highlights.
Full Article http://www.caranddriver.com/features/12340/volkswagens-powertrains-of-the-future.html
In which we sample Volkswagen’s alternative fuels of today, tomorrow, and sometime late next week.
BY JARED GALL, January 2007
Recently we traveled to Valencia, Spain, to sample Volkswagen’s plans to stretch the usefulness of our remaining oil reserves, as well as to how to keep earthlings mobile when we suck our last drop from the planet.
Listening to some of VW’s engineers, one might think they expect this to happen sometime in the next thirteen minutes. We’re no environmental scientists, but we think we’re good until at least next Thursday. At least they’re planning ahead.
We had the opportunity to drive ten vehicles around Valencia’s “City of Arts and Sciences,” a beautiful complex of fountains, museums, and an opera house; an appropriately modern scene for cruising a selection of future-fuel vehicles and an assortment of vehicles leading the technology curve for European production models.
The mind-boggling array of vehicles present ran on six different fuels and included four different diesel-derivative engines: a current-production Polo BlueMotion diesel; a next-gen Jetta “Clean TDI” coming to the U.S. in ‘08 under the BlueTec banner; a New Beetle convertible running on SunFuel, a diesel fuel manufactured from biomass—plants, woodchips, and other forms of biological waste—and a Touran (think Mazda 5 tall wagon/mini-minivan) running VW’s Combined Combustion System (CCS), a mixture of gas and diesel that is said to burn more completely and is therefore cleaner than either fuel on its own. We also sampled two compressed natural gas (CNG) vehicles, a Touran and a Passat running VW’s new TSI turbo- and supercharged engine (this engine was also present in two gasoline trims); a half-baked hybrid Touran; and a Touran powered by a hydrogen fuel cell. It was a hectic afternoon. Read on for the highlights.
Full Article http://www.caranddriver.com/features/12340/volkswagens-powertrains-of-the-future.html
