Volkswagen GTE Sport imagines hot hatch hybridization
It's less a concept for a future model, and more of a thought experiment about what a hybrid, sporty Golf variant could be when regulations get really serious.
Volkswagen used the annual Wörthersee gathering—it's branched out from its roots as a festival of GTI nerds to encompass many more of the VW Group's brands—to present to the world its concept of the ultimate high-performance hybrid Golf. Witness the Golf GTE Sport, with two seats, a drivetrain sporting a rally-bred turbo engine and two electric motors, and C-pillars that drive the engineers wild.
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Volkswagen Golf GTE Sport - The Official Photos
The big deal about those pillars, aside from their normal duty upholding the roof and defining the rear hatch opening, is their flying-buttress design, sitting proud of the passenger compartment. A continuation of a design theme first seen on the 2007 Golf GTI W12-650 concept, and somewhat akin to the upcoming Ford GT, these floating pillars serve to send airflow to aerodynamic features and cooling ducts for the rear brakes.
Those best-in-class pillars, and indeed nearly the entire body of the Golf GTE Concept, are constructed from today's wonder material, carbon fiber—allowing significant weight savings over a similarly sized steel body and creating contrasting panels of unfinished weave pattern alongside the pearlescent White Club finish. And while the styling shows a strong family resemblance to VW's traditional hatchbacks, this is an entirely different beast: The concept is a few inches shorter from stem to stern, roughly two inches wider, and a full nine inches lower than the 2015 Golf you see on the streets.
As wild as it is on the outside, the Golf GTE Sport's interior takes things even further into sci-fi land. Through the two-passenger speedster's gullwing doors—with openings that extend deep into the roof, GT40-style—you'll find a dual-binnacle cockpit with a carbon-fiber bulkhead splitting driver from passenger. Once belted into the five-point harness, the driver faces a
Knight Rider–esque butterfly steering wheel. Three transparent display surfaces indicate charge status, gear selection, power delivery, speed, range, and for on-track excursions, a virtual readout showing the ideal racing line. Yes, VW envisions this taut hatchmobile as a machine that's "at home in both normal road traffic and racetrack conditions."
As in the production Golf GTE, the drivetrain starts with a turbocharged 1.6-liter four-cylinder—but then it goes off the rails from there. The concept's version of the engine is cribbed from the Polo R WRC racer, feeding 295 horses into a six-speed DSG gearbox and on to the front wheels. The gasoline-fueled output is boosted by two electric motors—one that adds 113 horses and more than 240 lb-ft to the front axle, and one that feeds 113 horses and a burly 200 lb-ft of torque to the rear.
That all adds up to nearly 500 lb-ft of torque delivered to all four wheels, using the same "electric driveshaft" function we last saw in VW's Sport Coupe Concept GTE, uh, concept. When full acceleration is demanded, the electric motor in the front driveline becomes a generator that sends engine-generated electricity to the rear-axle motor. All-wheel drive, no mechanical connection required.
That also means that VW's concept hatchy-thing is a plug-in hybrid. The automaker says the concept could traverse a smidge over 31 miles on electric-only power, and achieve nearly 118 mpg under Europe's supremely optimistic plug-in-hybrid test cycle. Foot to the floor, you'd likely get way, way less fuel mileage, but VW says you'd be capable of a 0-to-62-mph time of just 4.3 seconds and a top speed of around 174 mph. A fighter-jet-style, roof-mounted switch selects between "E-Mode," "Hybrid Mode," or the high-performance "GTE-Mode," which brings up a lap counter on the dashboard. Should things get too hot, an onboard fire-suppression system makes sure you don't get overcooked.
Don't expect the GTE Sport to hit your VW dealership anytime soon, of course. It's a concept—but it's safe to say that at least the drivetrain details give a glimpse at what Volkswagen has up its sleeve for the near future. Europe's newly stringent emissions and fuel-economy requirements heavily favor plug-in hybrids, with their zero-emissions capability for the short commutes that make up most of the average driver's miles. And the details of the GTE drivetrain in this concept coincide with a slew of recent VW design daydreams. The styling may be a one-off, but the motivation beneath the Golf GTE Sport is likely to be realized in production form soon enough. But maybe don't hold your breath for those earth-shattering C-pillars.
