1970 Volkswagen Bug on 2040-cars

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Leonardo DiCaprio buys rights to VW emissions scandal story

The smoke – proverbial or otherwise – has yet to clear from the Volkswagen diesel emissions scandal. But already they're negotiating over the book and even the movie rights to tell the story of the biggest debacle in the company's post-war history. The news revolves around Jack Ewing (no relation), European economics correspondent for the International New York Times. Ewing is preparing to write a book about the VW scandal. He's already sold the publishing rights to the as-yet untitled project to publishing house WW Norton & Company for a reported six-figure sum. Now movie producers are stepping in to buy the film rights to turn that book into a movie once it's finished. Paramount Pictures and Leonardo DiCaprio's production Appian Way have reportedly already acquired the movie rights. It remains unclear at this point, however, whether DiCaprio might act in the film as well as help produce it. His studio Appian Way produced several films in which Leo has starred in recent years, including The Aviator, Shutter Island, and The Wolf of Wall Street – but has also produced many movies without him. Of course, this isn't the first time DiCaprio has appeared on these pages. A longtime proponent of clean transportation, he was among the first Hollywood celebrities to drive a Prius, inspired the creation of the Fisker Karma, and partnered with Venturi to launch a Formula E electric racing team. It'd take some magic transformation to make DiCaprio look like Martin Winterkorn, or really any of the senior executives at Volkswagen. But whatever his involvement, we think The Wolf of Wolfsburg has a nice ring to it. Then again, so does Rolling Coal. News Source: ReutersImage Credit: Victoria Will/Invision/AP Celebrities Green TV/Movies Volkswagen Videos vw diesel scandal

VW decides against active-cooling system for e-Golf lithium battery

When the 2015 VW e-Golf was introduced at the LA Auto Show last year, VW said it would come with a water-cooled battery. During the Detroit Auto Show, when the car was trotted out again, VW released a new press release that stripped out the "water-cooled" language, but this change went unnoticed. During a recent VW event in Germany, a friend from Green Car Reports realized that the battery on display did not seem to have any water-cooling mechanisms. That set us off on a bit of a sleuthing and we have now learned that VW is not going to include any active cooling in the upcoming e-Golf. In fact, the company is entirely confident that this car - because of what it's designed to do - doesn't need it. "The need for a cooling system wasn't there" - VW's Darryll Harrison VW has been working on an electrified Golf for ages now, and so changes to the plan are to be expected. But battery cooling is vitally important not just to keep the car operating properly but because when things get too hot, there can be serious public relations problems. Nissan began testing a new battery chemistry for the Leaf in 2013 after an uproar from warm-weather EV drivers in Arizona who were experiencing worse-than-expected battery performance. The Leaf has always used an air-cooled battery, which is another way to say that there is no active cooling system (more details here). Tesla CEO Elon Musk once said this approach is "primitive." So, why is VW following the same path? We asked Darryll Harrison, VW US's manager of brand public relations west, for more information, and he told AutoblogGreen that VW engineers discovered through a lot of testing of the Golf Mk6 EV prototypes, that battery performance was not impacted by temperatures when using the right battery chemistry. That chemistry, it turns out, is lithium nickel manganese cobalt oxide (NMC) in cells from Panasonic. These cells had "the lowest self-warming tendency and the lowest memory effect of all cells tested," Harrison said. He added that VW engineers tested the NMC cells in places like Death Valley and Arizona and found they didn't warm very quickly either through operation, charging (including during fast charging) or through high ambient temps. "The need for a cooling system wasn't there," Harrison said.

Audi investing $30.3 billion through 2018 for product expansion

How does Audi plan to reach two million units in annual sales and pay for the 11 new models it's adding to its lineup - an expansion that may include models named SQ2, Q9 and F-Tron? By increasing its investment to 22 billion euros ($30.3 billion US) between now and 2018. That figure represents an increase of about 500 million euros over the previously planned outlay, according to a report by Automotive News, and that could be due to Audi wishing to goad the momentum that pushed it to 1.5 million annual sales two years ahead of schedule.
It's also about staving off the challenges from BMW and Mercedes-Benz. Now that BMW has been able to turn some of its attention away from its "i" series of Megacity cars, it will reportedly spend more than planned in 2014 as it continues the rollout of ten all-new vehicles and 15 new-generation vehicles through the end of next year. Mercedes, having been dropped to third in the sales race, is preparing to add 13 new cars over the next six years.
Audi's money is going into technology, into product like the next-generation TT and the Q1 and production expansions and upgrades all over the world. The expenditure represents just under a fourth of Volkswagen's 84.2 billion-euro ($115.7 US) outlay devoted to taking the number-one global automaker title away from General Motors and Toyota by 2018.