300mpg Diesel-Electric Hybrid Unveiled by Volkswagen

The star of this week’s Qatar motor show will undoubtedly be Volkswagen’s “one-liter car,” the diesel hybrid XL1, which is able to achieve more than 300 mpg.

The $60,000 XL1 is powered by an 800cc, two-cylinder turbodiesel powerplant (half a BlueMotion engine), producing 47bhp, supported by a 27bhp electric motor hat fuelled by lithium-ion batteries. The batteries can be charged from a domestic plug, allowing the car to travel 22 miles solely on electric power

Over the past decade governments worldwide have been pressing the automotive industry for better gas mileage, better fuel economy in vehicles, and other sources of energy. The XL1 fulfills all these requirements.

The XL1 also emits just 24g/km of CO2 and has a 0-60 time of 11.9 seconds. Its 10-liter diesel tank gives the XL1 a range of around 340 miles. Adding to the XL1’s remarkable fuel efficiency is the fact that the car has been designed to be as light as possible, with an unpainted carbon fiber skin over a magnesium-alloy subframe.

Efforts to pare weight extend to the engine, transmission, suspension, carbon fiber wheels, aluminum brakes, titanium hubs and ceramic bearings, producing a vehicle weighing only 1,752 pounds.

The XL1 is the brainchild of Volkswagen group former head Ferdinand Piëch, who initiated the project in 1998. Volkswagen’s designers and engineers responded to Piëch’s challenge, immediately setting about producing a carbon-fiber bodied car with tandem seating and a single-piston engine. In 2002, in his last public appearance as chairman, Piëch drove to a VW shareholders meeting in Hamburg in the prototype, and even then managed to beat the fuel-consumption target that he had set his engineers. Following Piëch’s leaving Volkswagen, the project was essentially shelved until Piëch’s replacement, Martin Winterkorn, along with Volkswagen’s research and development head Ulrich Hackenberg, revisited the concept and developed the twin-cylinder hybrid L1, which appeared at the Frankfurt Motor Show in 2009.

Source: http://goo.gl/8EWL8D