Volkswagen unveiled the Golf blue-e-motion concept car in a ceremonial presentation today for the German Chancellor Dr. Angela Merkel.
The blue e-motion is powered by an electric motor developing 85 kW fed by a lithium-ion battery pack – good enough for a top speedof 140 km/h. A handy 270 N.m of torque is served up instantaneously, while the batteries provide the blue e-motion with an operational range of up to 150 km.
A limited production run of 500 units has been put forward for testing next year with the intention of bringing the blue e-motion into production by 2013. Volkswagen’s in-house EV team will also develop a plug-in hybrid version of the Jetta (probably wearing a Golf 6-esque nose and sharing the aforementioned powerplant) as well as an all-electric version of the company’s Up! Supermini, dubbed the Up! Blue e-motion.
“Future electric cars give us enormous opportunities for reshaping mobility to be even more sustainable…[but] the federal government must ensure that eco-friendly energy sources are utilised. Only then will we experience a genuine transition to a new era,” said Dr. Martin Winterkorn, Chairman of VW, in the press release for the Golf blue e-motion.
Volkswagen’s interest in the EV market has been piqued by the German federal government’s goal of putting one million electric vehicles on the roads by 2020, with the company hoping to be the main supplier of those cars.
Even so, Volkswagen has not turned its back on the development of fuel-efficient combustion engines and recently showcased a new 3-cylinder turbodiesel engine at the International Vienna Motor Symposium.
The engine will be utilised in the upcoming Polo BlueMotion and will develop 55 kW and 180 N.m of torque at 2 000 r/min. Volkswagen has yet to provide details regarding this unit’s fuel efficiency, but it has revealed that the new engine has taken into account such fuel-saving factors as weight reduction, enhanced thermodynamic efficiency and reduced friction power loss.