The desire to leapfrog the competition through innovative technology has always been a driving force in the automotive field. In 2002, Volkswagen Group chairman Ferdinand Piëch underscored this by driving the company’s breakthrough 1-Liter car concept from Wolfsburg to Hamburg to prove a point: Traveling 100 kilometers on one liter of fuel not only was theoretically possible, but could be done in the here-and-now. It created quite a stir.
That milestone, which translated to a whopping 235 miles-per-gallon, set some pretty high expectations for the future. The next challenge would be an eventual transition from concept to manufacturable car in ways that would allow mass production of such a vehicle at an affordable cost. That’s no easy thing, which is why many concepts never make it past the ‘what-if’ stage. The 1-Liter car is not one of them.
Volkswagen has now reached another milestone with the VW L1, a follow-on concept that’s said to point the way toward a production version. Weighing in at a scant 838 pounds with a lightweight carbon-fiber reinforced body (CFRB) offering a remarkably slippery 0.195 Cd (coefficient of drag), this new concept carries on the original design’s tandem aircraft-style seating. A lift-up canopy allows entry and exit, reinforcing the jet fighter theme.
Then there’s this car’s unique physical footprint. At 150.1 inches, the L1 features an overall length that’s similar to VW’s Fox, a city car that’s been sold outside of the U.S. market for some years now. Similarities end there. In fact, the L1 features a ground-hugging silhouette that, at 45 inches high, is more aligned with that of a Lamborghini Murcielago … and its 47.2 inch width has no peers anywhere within the ranks of today’s production cars. It’s a given that if a production car emerges based on the L1 concept – and VW is hinting strongly that this may be the case by 2013 – then those behind the wheel will have no worries about getting lost in the crowd.
European automakers in particular have a penchant for advanced diesel technology, and VW is no exception. In this school of thought, combining advanced diesel power with electric drive simply makes sense. It’s no surprise, then, that the second generation concept’s powertrain has evolved to now include a new high-tech 0.8-liter turbo direct-injected (TDI) engine. Available power is 27 hp in ‘ECO’ mode and 39 hp in ‘SPORT’ mode, with a maximum 74 lb-ft of torque. An electric motor, start-stop system, and 7-speed DSG gearbox augment the rear-mounted clean diesel powerplant. Top speed is just under 100 mph.
The VW L1 shares a different way of thinking in its approach to super-high fuel economy through lightweighting, diminutive size, and a small but advanced diesel-electric hybrid powerplant. While not everyone will want a very small vehicle with two-place tandem seating, a choice like this would fit the needs of a lot of drivers who deal with solo commutes every day and are tired of paying the price for their mobility in high gas costs and unnecessary CO2 emissions.
While this latest iteration’s nod to functionality has seen overall fuel efficiency slip a bit from 1 liter to 1.38 liters of fuel required per 100 km of driving … a ‘mere’ 170 mpg … we figure that drivers can clearly live with that.
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