2014 Volkswagen Beetle 2.5l on 2040-cars

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VW budget sub-brand stuck in limbo over VW standards, costs

Reports in October 2012 claimed Volkswagen had begun investigating the creation of its own budget brand. This came after having failed to purchase Malaysian car company Proton or produce a meaningful partnership with Suzuki, and after watching Renault-Nissan make piles of euro on Dacia and plot the return of Datsun.
For VW, more important than the question of what to call it was how to build it profitably and in a way that didn't damage the VW brand. According to a report in Autocar, a satisfactory answer still hasn't been found. The hurdle is how to hit "'necessary' quality and safety levels" at the price points needed to make the venture worthwhile. At the time of the 2012 report, German outlet Der Spiegel said VW was trying to get prices down to 6,000 to 8,000 euro ($7,784 to $10,379 US), about two thousand to four thousand euro under the price of the VW Up and in line with the cost of a 6,790-euro Dacia Sandero in Germany.
In March 2013, VW announced, "We want to bring a true budget car to the market in China in the foreseeable future," the most concrete move in that direction after years of planning to make a decision. Working with local Chinese maker FAW, it was predicted that the vehicle in question would appear around 2016, but as of November last year a final vote on it needed to wait until this year because "We are still working on the cost side" and profit possibilities for a car that "has to be durable, it has to be precise, it has to be safe."

How VW's hyper-efficient XL1 will influence the next Golf

In 2007, the European Union mandated fleet average CO2 emissions of 158.7 g/km. For 2015, that figure will drop to 130 g/km, and the target for 2020 is an ambitions 95 g/km. Thanks to some German politicking, that target will be phased in from 2020 to 2024, but it will still apply to 80 percent of passenger cars in that first year. In US miles per gallon, that's the equivalent of going from about 35 mpg to 42 mpg to 57 mpg. The current Volkswagen Golf is rated from 85 g/km of CO2 to 190 g/km depending on model - and zero for the e-Golf, so for the next-generation MkVIII hatch due in 2019, to meet the goal, Volkswagen engineers will need to introduce a bunch of new tricks. According to a report in Autocar, VW be mining its hyper-efficient XL1 for some of them.
Predictions for the next Golf include a variable-compression engine, an electric flywheel and an electric turbo, along with taking greater advantage of coasting. Volkswagen could be getting help from Audi with the electric turbo and variable-compression engine and electric turbo, with Audi already having shown off the former and brand technical boss Ulrich Hackenberg confirming the VW Group is working on the latter. It's possible the flywheel system could also have the mark of The Four Rings: Autocar mentions a British system that Volvo is testing, but the R18 e-tron Quattro racer has been using one for years.
The need for such features is because the company won't be able to net enough future gains from just aerodynamic improvements and advanced materials. As price will be a factor (the regulations are expected to "add hundreds of euros to the cost of building a car"), adding much more aluminum or carbon fiber is an unlikely option. We're told the next generation won't be longer or wider than the current car, and being Europe's most popular model, VW doesn't want to make a big bet on futuristic aero, but the report says the MkVIII will "likely" have "the most aerodynamic treatment yet seen on a production vehicle," the area where lessons learned from the XL1 will truly be seen.

VW CEO under fire after emissions scandal, stock slide

Pressure piled on the head of Volkswagen on Monday in the wake of an emissions-testing scandal that's seen around 15 billion euros ($16.9 billion) wiped off the company's market value. Following revelations that the German carmaker had rigged US emissions tests for about 500,000 diesel cars, VW CEO Martin Winterkorn apologized Sunday for the fact that his company had "broken the trust of our customers and the public." But saying sorry wasn't enough for investors as they digested the financial and reputational implications of the scandal on the world's biggest carmaker by sales – in mid-afternoon trading in Frankfurt, Volkswagen's share price was down a stunning 17.8 percent at a near three-year low of 132.15 euros. Earlier it had tumbled by more than 20 percent. In the wake of Friday's revelations from the US's Environmental Protection Agency, VW has already halted sales of some vehicles in the US and pledged to cooperate with regulators in an investigation that could, in theory, see the company fined up to $18 billion. Industry analysts said the VW CEO faces difficult questions in the coming days, particularly when the company's board is scheduled to meet Friday. "At the moment, I'd be surprised if Winterkorn can ride this out." - Christian Stadler "At the moment, I'd be surprised if Winterkorn can ride this out, but in Germany there's often a slightly slower process in these matters," said Christian Stadler, a professor of strategic management at Warwick Business School who researches the car industry. Stadler said that if VW were a US company, then the CEO would have gone more or less immediately. In essence, Volkswagen stands accused of skirting the US's clean air rules. The EPA said VW used a device programmed to detect when the cars are undergoing official emissions testing. The software device then turns off the emissions controls during normal driving situations, allowing the cars to emit more than the legal limit of pollutants. Guido Reinking, a German auto expert, said that for a company to engage in such blatant trickery the company's top executives would have to be informed. Winterkorn, an engineer by training, led research and development across the VW group from 2007. He became chairman of the management board the same year. "It's almost impossible to imagine that he didn't know about this special way of programming the engine," Reinking told German television station n-tv.