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.
Perhaps not "global", but it sure seems to be pretty much the entire Western world by now. The US was the first to lose its sedans, but over here in Europe the cars are rapidly expanding as well.
Are we sure that's still happening? It definitely did happen, but anecdotally the SUVs I see on the road seem to be shrinking slightly, from mid and full size SUVs to compact and subcompact SUVs. Not down to Sedans, but not as big as 10 years ago. Maybe my location is weird though.
I'm with you, but there's a bit of an arms race where the more people have SUVs, the more unsafe people in non-SUVs feel (due to collision characteristics, but also because they can't see past the damn things).
Both are irrelevant for your sub-100-mile daily commute, and the additional initial charge for a twice-a-year road trip is a rounding error.
The additional range is nice for home charging when you regularly do 500-mile-plus daily round trips, but that's way beyond regular commute ranges, and someone like an on-location service technician will have the company pay for it anyways.
I won't say that nobody does it, but we're definitely talking about edge cases here.
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 on a square-mile basis, 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, and very few that are more than 50.
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.
This is literally the only reason I have a J3400 adapter, as much as I hate the idea of giving money to a Musk company we have to admit that Tesla are one of only two companies installing charging stations that has an incentive to maximize coverage instead of profitability (the other being Rivian who is largely targeting off-highway areas ignored by the other networks).
Population-wise that's a rounding error, and very few people routinely take 500+ mile road trips without ever encountering a rest stop or town large enough to warrant a charger.
Perhaps there are some farm workers left who would like some additional range, but they can always throw an extra battery pack or two in the cargo bed, Cybertruck-style.
There will always be people who aren't perfectly served by the currently-available options. We shouldn't let the outliers dominate the conversation when the existing options are sufficient for the vast majority.
> There are big sections of the western US (for example) where the existing EV ranges are a dealbreaker.
Not really anymore, at least not as far as places people regularly need to drive for personal reasons. I'm not saying you can't find people for whom an EV isn't a practical option, I don't even have to look outside of my inner suburban neighborhood to find those, but just like in my neighborhood the majority of people even living in the rural west would have no problem having an EV as a daily because they can charge at home.
Most people aren't driving 200+ miles every day or constantly towing things even if they live and work in the middle of nowhere, and the fact that they can install a fuel station that has little to no operating cost basically anywhere that has a good view of the sky offers advantages of its own.
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.
But yes. Good on Europe and China for pushing these technologies forward.
Increased charging rate also means that fewer charging stations can serve more cars. One Megawatt charger can serve 4x as many cars as a 250 kW charger in the same span of time.
Sub-10-minute charging is going to be standard in new Chinese EVs very soon. There are already many new models on the market this year with charging times between 5 and 10 minutes. There will soon be cars with Megawatt charging speeds that sell for $15k.
As I understand it, Chinese manufacturers have optimized for a different set of parameters than European manufacturers. The Europeans emphasize range, but the Chinese are more willing to trade range for cost while optimizing charging rate.
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 is exporting ~4M more vehicles per year than VW delivers globally, as of this comment).
I don't know man, they're cutting 100k jobs to keep the dividends flowing (The Porsche-Piëch family controls a majority of VW's voting rights through Porsche SE) while closing factories. That strikes me as "preserve the share price and profits while the ship sinks" versus investment to scale EV sales to compete.
This car is roughly 3-4x more efficient than the average Chinese SUV, which typically consume well above 20 kWh/100 km (which energetically, though not in terms of emissions, approaches what an efficient compact ICE car consumes). It does this range on a 50-something kWh battery pack, instead of a three-digit kWh battery pack. Since consumption is so low, range added per minute of charging is up there. Everything can be smaller, lighter, made with less resources, creating fewer emissions, byproducts and downstream effects etc.
Yes, driving truck-sized cars with two-ton batteries the size of a french-door fridge also works and also easily moves 1.5 people per 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...
The lower is your state of charge, the more you are willing to reach the destination with your remanining capacity :) The time spend riding slower is usually not so different than when you drive normally, and it reduces the inconvenience of looking for a charger almost at the goal.
Seemed to have been produced a bunch for never making it into production
> A limited production of 250 began by mid 2013 with pricing started at €111,000 (~ £119,000). As a plug-in diesel-electric hybrid, the XL1 was available only in Europe and its 5.5 kWh lithium-ion battery delivered an all-electric range of 50 km (31 mi),[3] had a fuel economy of 0.9 L/100 km (310 mpg‑imp) under the NEDC cycle and produced emissions of 21 g/km of CO2.[8] It was released to retail customers in Germany in June 2014.[3]
The current safety and mpg targets for car manufacturers incentivize them to produce 'cars' of a certain size and weight to avoid compliance with stricter standards on smaller vehicles.
As such, the manufactuers have incentivized customers to buy SUVs for a few decades now.
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.
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 skinny, that's not particularly tall, but if I was a driver, I'd certainly consider the leg/head room of an SUV.
That's a silly stereotype. My wife is thin and loves SUVs for the extra leg and arm room, in addition to the extra driving height. That said, obese people will certainly enjoy the same benefits.
Is it only fat people who pay extra for more personal space on any other form of transport?
I think there's a stronger argument that if you really don't want huge vehicles, you could at least improve ventilation. Air quality and temperature have a massive psychological effect.
Anecdotally, I think most people were fine with a subcompact back in the day because they weren't so airtight and we used to even have crotch vents. So much comfort has been sacrificed over the years because of autistic designer bullshit like "road noise".
It's why you can hop into an old Toyota truck (far smaller than modern SUVs) and instantly feel at ease and grounded. Fits like an old glove and that was always the point. You get improved road awareness and less highway hypnosis. You don't get that nervous system disconnect between your inputs into the car and the feedback. It feels more like an extension of your body and less like a spaceship or coffin on wheels.
After 10 straight hours of freeway driving across Texas, give me a spaceship on wheels with "autistic bullshit" no road noise, please. Or better yet, something that drives itself. Don't get me wrong, I love a spirited jaunt through the mountains on four or two wheels, but the vehicle for that isn't the vehicle to drive in an almost straight line for 10 (or more!) straight hours.
I don't think the vehicle is going to make a difference at that point. You shouldn't be driving so long without a break anyway!
Thanks for demonstrating the attitude that got us here in the first place, though. In your reply, we have an answer for the rest of the world why americans buy SUVs.
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.
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
And to that point, station wagons tend to have better cargo length than equivalent-capacity SUVs as well. Where the SUV does win is height - but then again, if you regularly transport large boxes, some variant of minivan would be even better.
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.
> 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 Hyundai 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).
Aptera is getting pretty close to shipping first customer cars this year, or at least seems to be, while this is a one-off research prototype - I think your comment is not quite fair.
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.
The extra range seems to mostly come from big increases in aerodynamic efficiency rather than just jamming a huge battery into the chassis so I'm not sure it would demand a huge premium, at least not because of the BOM.
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.
How is the infotainment tablet in a 14 year old Model S performing these days? Haven't they progressively worsened its performance through software updates and then sold you a hardware upgrade to fix it for several thousand dollars?
I'd rather just bring my phone, which gets replaced every 4-years or so anyway.
I thought that was a pretty direct response to "And it doesn't make you bring your own phone and bluetooth speaker for infotainment."
As far as I'm concerned, not being able to bring your phone to the infotainment system is a negative, not something to brag about. I had my last car until it was 19 years old, and I have zero faith that an in-car computer will perform adequately for that long.
The other specs of the Model S are still very impressive and I don't have anything to add about on those.
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.
I’ve not looked it up, but I’d venture to guess that a ‘73 Fleetwood was one of the longest cars made. And, as you alluded to, absolutely bonkers length from wheel center to each bumper.
Our Hyundai has the opposite problem. Because the flat battery pack allows the wheels to be shoved to the corners, it looks smallish but has a longer wheelbase than Hyundai’s large Palisade SUV. Which makes it a pig to park.
In the long term we are all dead. But I think you mean that VW fleet electrification effort is dead. Which is not true either. You're underestimating the willingness of people in Europe to buy domestically produced cars. Even if they are not the state of the art from the perspective of picking up the latest EV technology. Don't forget the new china propagated LFP batteries are not better than the already existing NMCs. They may be cheaper, NMCs got cheaper too.
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.
Yeah I can't speak much to circuit racing (nor drag racing for that matter). I just know that the EV's I've driven have been fun to drive. I don't believe that most people talking about "fun to drive" are taking their cars to a racetrack either though.
I guess I haven't taken any corners agressively enough to really notice the problems you describe with weight.
I will say though that at least for non-racetrack scenarios, the extra weight isn't always as noticable as you'd think because the centre of mass tends to be extremely low relative to an ICE vehicle.
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.
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.
> Why don't we just build high speed electrified rail
Good luck convincing all those Americans the rail line has to run through their property to freely give up the right-of-way. You're already dead in the first few hundred feet of rail when the first person says "fuck off, no" and starts challenging your eminent domain.
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.
The light rail is especially chilly, but it has to be with how often they open all the doors at every stop and let in a little heat each time.
As a planned city the downtown urban area was ideal for all kinds of transportation, with streets wide enough not to be obstructed by double-parked wagons, and suitable for streetcars to be installed just about anywhere when they arrived. Much more amenable to public transport than SF or New Orleans, even though horses were the primary consideration to begin with.
The problem was always overpriced real estate downtown, and it got to be too late for newcomers to afford, so anyone that could then started or settled in nearby communities at different distances outside city limits.
With unbridled growth, the city gradually annexed or enclosed these "suburbs", some of which are inside the 610 loop. Pretty much part of the urban area now, but not originally connected by more than one trail usually, which must have left some residual bottlenecks to this day. And that's inside the loop, where people once commuted in from the western suburb of Bellaire, or the close-in location of the Heights.
Just outside the loop to the southeast, people used to consciously depart from Houston and drive "all the way out" to Pasadena. When public transport was on the rise in the county (far too late) about 50 years ago, Pasadena voted not to pay the extra 1% sales tax which was earmarked for Metro, simply because they did not want innumerable people in the big city who couldn't afford cars to descend on their much smaller industrial suburb so easily.
I guess without intervention, stupidity trumps planning if growth is excessive or too accelerated.
For me, I'm just fine on a bike in 100 degree heat with (life-giving) humidity to boot, but I'm probably not the average senior citizen. The homes I like best were built specifically for this climate before A/C, and have more than enough windows to open, and I prefer not to use A/C when driving alone either.
I came from Florida so this is Northern Living to me, if I didn't like it hot I wouldn't be here :)
1. It's at speed of 42 miles/hr. You can't compare those numbers to EPA or even WLTP numbers.
Hypermiling records using Tesla cars:
- 1078 km, Tesla S, 25 mph,
- 975 km, Model 3, 20-30mph
- 909 km, Model 3, 50mph
The last one is comparable and available today.
2. It has solar panels. That tells me those are not serious people (or a PR stunt).
Solar charging math on area that small is so brutal that adding cost / weight of solar panels on a car is sheer stupidity. Adding few miles of range per day (on sunny day parked outside) doesn't make sense.
You're more likely to have a regular outlet in your garage and recharge 100 miles overnight.
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.
Perhaps not "global", but it sure seems to be pretty much the entire Western world by now. The US was the first to lose its sedans, but over here in Europe the cars are rapidly expanding as well.
Are we sure that's still happening? It definitely did happen, but anecdotally the SUVs I see on the road seem to be shrinking slightly, from mid and full size SUVs to compact and subcompact SUVs. Not down to Sedans, but not as big as 10 years ago. Maybe my location is weird though.
Personally would never buy an SUV. Don't think I'm the only one even if that market still has some room to grow.
I'm with you, but there's a bit of an arms race where the more people have SUVs, the more unsafe people in non-SUVs feel (due to collision characteristics, but also because they can't see past the damn things).
Where is it not a thing? Japan?
I'd rather have longer range than faster charging because I pay so much less for electricity at home than at a public charging station.
Being able to bring more energy with me is a very useful.
Both are irrelevant for your sub-100-mile daily commute, and the additional initial charge for a twice-a-year road trip is a rounding error.
The additional range is nice for home charging when you regularly do 500-mile-plus daily round trips, but that's way beyond regular commute ranges, and someone like an on-location service technician will have the company pay for it anyways.
I won't say that nobody does it, but we're definitely talking about edge cases here.
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 on a square-mile basis, 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, and very few that are more than 50.
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.
This is literally the only reason I have a J3400 adapter, as much as I hate the idea of giving money to a Musk company we have to admit that Tesla are one of only two companies installing charging stations that has an incentive to maximize coverage instead of profitability (the other being Rivian who is largely targeting off-highway areas ignored by the other networks).
Heads up, Loves is deploying their own fast DC charging network.
https://www.loves.com/ev-charging
Population-wise that's a rounding error, and very few people routinely take 500+ mile road trips without ever encountering a rest stop or town large enough to warrant a charger.
Perhaps there are some farm workers left who would like some additional range, but they can always throw an extra battery pack or two in the cargo bed, Cybertruck-style.
There will always be people who aren't perfectly served by the currently-available options. We shouldn't let the outliers dominate the conversation when the existing options are sufficient for the vast majority.
> There are big sections of the western US (for example) where the existing EV ranges are a dealbreaker.
Not really anymore, at least not as far as places people regularly need to drive for personal reasons. I'm not saying you can't find people for whom an EV isn't a practical option, I don't even have to look outside of my inner suburban neighborhood to find those, but just like in my neighborhood the majority of people even living in the rural west would have no problem having an EV as a daily because they can charge at home.
Most people aren't driving 200+ miles every day or constantly towing things even if they live and work in the middle of nowhere, and the fact that they can install a fuel station that has little to no operating cost basically anywhere that has a good view of the sky offers advantages of its own.
Where?
https://hn.algolia.com/?q=walmart+ev
https://supercharge.info/map
https://www.plugshare.com/
US Gains 11,300 Ultra-Fast Chargers in Bet to Lure More EV Drivers - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46815932 - January 2026 (11 comments)
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.
But yes. Good on Europe and China for pushing these technologies forward.
Increased charging rate also means that fewer charging stations can serve more cars. One Megawatt charger can serve 4x as many cars as a 250 kW charger in the same span of time.
Sub-10-minute charging is going to be standard in new Chinese EVs very soon. There are already many new models on the market this year with charging times between 5 and 10 minutes. There will soon be cars with Megawatt charging speeds that sell for $15k.
As I understand it, Chinese manufacturers have optimized for a different set of parameters than European manufacturers. The Europeans emphasize range, but the Chinese are more willing to trade range for cost while optimizing charging rate.
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 is exporting ~4M more vehicles per year than VW delivers globally, as of this comment).
If this is messaging fluff, it's aimed at regulators and politicians in Europe. Not shareholders.
I don't know man, they're cutting 100k jobs to keep the dividends flowing (The Porsche-Piëch family controls a majority of VW's voting rights through Porsche SE) while closing factories. That strikes me as "preserve the share price and profits while the ship sinks" versus investment to scale EV sales to compete.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49556939
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/jun/26/vw-cut-jobs...
> versus investment to scale EV sales to compete
You can do both if you convince Berlin or Brussels to give you cash.
Are Berlin or Brussels giving VW cash?
This car is roughly 3-4x more efficient than the average Chinese SUV, which typically consume well above 20 kWh/100 km (which energetically, though not in terms of emissions, approaches what an efficient compact ICE car consumes). It does this range on a 50-something kWh battery pack, instead of a three-digit kWh battery pack. Since consumption is so low, range added per minute of charging is up there. Everything can be smaller, lighter, made with less resources, creating fewer emissions, byproducts and downstream effects etc.
Yes, driving truck-sized cars with two-ton batteries the size of a french-door fridge also works and also easily moves 1.5 people per trip.
> an additional few hundred miles just isn't that useful anymore.
Bad take.
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...
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.
The lower is your state of charge, the more you are willing to reach the destination with your remanining capacity :) The time spend riding slower is usually not so different than when you drive normally, and it reduces the inconvenience of looking for a charger almost at the goal.
seems you compare apples and oranges, I very much doubt your stated consumption is under same conditions you describe for their consumption
ordinary cars can get to 13kWh/100km which ain't that far from 7.5 you mention
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
Seemed to have been produced a bunch for never making it into production
> A limited production of 250 began by mid 2013 with pricing started at €111,000 (~ £119,000). As a plug-in diesel-electric hybrid, the XL1 was available only in Europe and its 5.5 kWh lithium-ion battery delivered an all-electric range of 50 km (31 mi),[3] had a fuel economy of 0.9 L/100 km (310 mpg‑imp) under the NEDC cycle and produced emissions of 21 g/km of CO2.[8] It was released to retail customers in Germany in June 2014.[3]
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...
Let's hope aerodynamics can save us from SUV disease
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...
The current safety and mpg targets for car manufacturers incentivize them to produce 'cars' of a certain size and weight to avoid compliance with stricter standards on smaller vehicles.
As such, the manufactuers have incentivized customers to buy SUVs for a few decades now.
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.
>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 skinny, that's not particularly tall, but if I was a driver, I'd certainly consider the leg/head room of an SUV.
That's a silly stereotype. My wife is thin and loves SUVs for the extra leg and arm room, in addition to the extra driving height. That said, obese people will certainly enjoy the same benefits.
Is it only fat people who pay extra for more personal space on any other form of transport?
I think there's a stronger argument that if you really don't want huge vehicles, you could at least improve ventilation. Air quality and temperature have a massive psychological effect.
Anecdotally, I think most people were fine with a subcompact back in the day because they weren't so airtight and we used to even have crotch vents. So much comfort has been sacrificed over the years because of autistic designer bullshit like "road noise".
It's why you can hop into an old Toyota truck (far smaller than modern SUVs) and instantly feel at ease and grounded. Fits like an old glove and that was always the point. You get improved road awareness and less highway hypnosis. You don't get that nervous system disconnect between your inputs into the car and the feedback. It feels more like an extension of your body and less like a spaceship or coffin on wheels.
After 10 straight hours of freeway driving across Texas, give me a spaceship on wheels with "autistic bullshit" no road noise, please. Or better yet, something that drives itself. Don't get me wrong, I love a spirited jaunt through the mountains on four or two wheels, but the vehicle for that isn't the vehicle to drive in an almost straight line for 10 (or more!) straight hours.
I don't think the vehicle is going to make a difference at that point. You shouldn't be driving so long without a break anyway!
Thanks for demonstrating the attitude that got us here in the first place, though. In your reply, we have an answer for the rest of the world why americans buy SUVs.
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...
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.
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
> Because they are very comfortable
They're also convenient for hauling around toys. Being able to put my skis inside my car is nice in shit weather.
That rather seems to hinge on vehicle length, not height. Unless putting in skis upright in the passenger seat is the goal.
And to that point, station wagons tend to have better cargo length than equivalent-capacity SUVs as well. Where the SUV does win is height - but then again, if you regularly transport large boxes, some variant of minivan would be even better.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Cybercab
Cybercab is most efficient electric production car, 165 Wh/mile
> Cybercab is most efficient electric production car
As impressive as the efficiency there is, I'm going to take issue with the "production car" part of this statement.
It's not like I can walk into a dealership and drive one of those bad boys home either...
Well, no. The whole point of the "cab" part is that you don't have to drive it yourself.
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.
In terms of footprint (4.8 meters long, 1.75 m wide) I'd say it's only small for US standards. It seems to look rather smaller than it is.
> 188 inches (4,775 mm) long, 69 inches (1,744 mm) wide, and just 55 inches (1,392 mm) tall.
VW's term is "near-production" -- an achievement which, of course, can declared arbitrarily.
> 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 Hyundai 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.
Aptera is getting pretty close to shipping first customer cars this year, or at least seems to be, while this is a one-off research prototype - I think your comment is not quite fair.
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.
The extra range seems to mostly come from big increases in aerodynamic efficiency rather than just jamming a huge battery into the chassis so I'm not sure it would demand a huge premium, at least not because of the BOM.
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.
How is the infotainment tablet in a 14 year old Model S performing these days? Haven't they progressively worsened its performance through software updates and then sold you a hardware upgrade to fix it for several thousand dollars?
I'd rather just bring my phone, which gets replaced every 4-years or so anyway.
I understand I must've triggered some sort of prerecorded response, but this is pretty off-topic even given that.
I thought that was a pretty direct response to "And it doesn't make you bring your own phone and bluetooth speaker for infotainment."
As far as I'm concerned, not being able to bring your phone to the infotainment system is a negative, not something to brag about. I had my last car until it was 19 years old, and I have zero faith that an in-car computer will perform adequately for that long.
The other specs of the Model S are still very impressive and I don't have anything to add about on those.
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.
Those headlights look straight out of the "Cars" movies.
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.
Somehow it looks cool for a movie, but ugly for real life.
Bring back wheel covers!
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?
Same thing you did sixty years ago when your Cadillac got a flat: take the cover off the wheel well.
https://photos.classiccars.com/cc-temp/listing/165/1814/3484...
These were so fun to drive.
1973 had some of the longest Cadillacs in decades.
Not everybody was aware at the time, but the turning radius was actually smaller than the Volkswagen beetle.
Not the turning radius of the whole car, just the wheelbase ;)
I’ve not looked it up, but I’d venture to guess that a ‘73 Fleetwood was one of the longest cars made. And, as you alluded to, absolutely bonkers length from wheel center to each bumper.
Our Hyundai has the opposite problem. Because the flat battery pack allows the wheels to be shoved to the corners, it looks smallish but has a longer wheelbase than Hyundai’s large Palisade SUV. Which makes it a pig to park.
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.
Presumably the faring panel comes off, just like on an early-model Honda Insight
No different than the front tire, same thing as any modern car which does not carry a spare tire either.
don't get me wrong but VW is dead already.
In the long term we are all dead. But I think you mean that VW fleet electrification effort is dead. Which is not true either. You're underestimating the willingness of people in Europe to buy domestically produced cars. Even if they are not the state of the art from the perspective of picking up the latest EV technology. Don't forget the new china propagated LFP batteries are not better than the already existing NMCs. They may be cheaper, NMCs got cheaper too.
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.
Yeah I can't speak much to circuit racing (nor drag racing for that matter). I just know that the EV's I've driven have been fun to drive. I don't believe that most people talking about "fun to drive" are taking their cars to a racetrack either though.
I guess I haven't taken any corners agressively enough to really notice the problems you describe with weight.
I will say though that at least for non-racetrack scenarios, the extra weight isn't always as noticable as you'd think because the centre of mass tends to be extremely low relative to an ICE vehicle.
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.
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.
> 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?
> Why don't we just build high speed electrified rail
Good luck convincing all those Americans the rail line has to run through their property to freely give up the right-of-way. You're already dead in the first few hundred feet of rail when the first person says "fuck off, no" and starts challenging your eminent domain.
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.
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.
Trains can only get you right next to a very small fraction of the city. The rest of the way you have to walk(I call it the “last mile” problem)
Mostly due to the poor design of the city, yes.
Do we really need to turn this into a discussion of lost causes? Yes, you monumentally fucked up urban design in many parts of your country.
Yes, fixing it is theoretically possible. No, it can't be done in any reasonably small time scale.
Euros own hundreds of millions of cars
What is your point?
The light rail is especially chilly, but it has to be with how often they open all the doors at every stop and let in a little heat each time.
As a planned city the downtown urban area was ideal for all kinds of transportation, with streets wide enough not to be obstructed by double-parked wagons, and suitable for streetcars to be installed just about anywhere when they arrived. Much more amenable to public transport than SF or New Orleans, even though horses were the primary consideration to begin with.
The problem was always overpriced real estate downtown, and it got to be too late for newcomers to afford, so anyone that could then started or settled in nearby communities at different distances outside city limits.
With unbridled growth, the city gradually annexed or enclosed these "suburbs", some of which are inside the 610 loop. Pretty much part of the urban area now, but not originally connected by more than one trail usually, which must have left some residual bottlenecks to this day. And that's inside the loop, where people once commuted in from the western suburb of Bellaire, or the close-in location of the Heights.
Just outside the loop to the southeast, people used to consciously depart from Houston and drive "all the way out" to Pasadena. When public transport was on the rise in the county (far too late) about 50 years ago, Pasadena voted not to pay the extra 1% sales tax which was earmarked for Metro, simply because they did not want innumerable people in the big city who couldn't afford cars to descend on their much smaller industrial suburb so easily.
I guess without intervention, stupidity trumps planning if growth is excessive or too accelerated.
For me, I'm just fine on a bike in 100 degree heat with (life-giving) humidity to boot, but I'm probably not the average senior citizen. The homes I like best were built specifically for this climate before A/C, and have more than enough windows to open, and I prefer not to use A/C when driving alone either.
I came from Florida so this is Northern Living to me, if I didn't like it hot I wouldn't be here :)
"No way to do this", says only country not doing it yet.
No country has a city the size of Houston with its low density where you can get anywhere with public transit.
Yeah that's because it's not a city. Cities are dense enough to support a bus network or else it's just a town or sprawling suburb.
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1. It's at speed of 42 miles/hr. You can't compare those numbers to EPA or even WLTP numbers.
Hypermiling records using Tesla cars:
The last one is comparable and available today.2. It has solar panels. That tells me those are not serious people (or a PR stunt).
Solar charging math on area that small is so brutal that adding cost / weight of solar panels on a car is sheer stupidity. Adding few miles of range per day (on sunny day parked outside) doesn't make sense.
You're more likely to have a regular outlet in your garage and recharge 100 miles overnight.