volkswagon xL1 electric??

[evboy]

I was reading this article: http://motorburn.com/2014/01/12-of-the-most-aerodynamic-cars-in-production-right-now/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; which says the xl1 is the most aerodynamic car. with all the talk about ev's being ugly. this car is beautiful. why cant they make this car 100% electric and mass produce it.There would be no need to change the body style for a long time which would save them money in the long term. why make the golf electric. thats ugly. you have a great design. put some batteries on the floor and you have a winner. why cant the leaf just copy this car. it cant be exact im assuming but lets get real close.

 

[Deleted member 14724]

I was reading this article: http://motorburn.com/2014/01/12-of-the-most-aerodynamic-cars-in-production-right-now/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; which says the xl1 is the most aerodynamic car. with all the talk about ev's being ugly. this car is beautiful. why cant they make this car 100% electric and mass produce it.There would be no need to change the body style for a long time which would save them money in the long term. why make the golf electric. thats ugly. you have a great design. put some batteries on the floor and you have a winner. why cant the leaf just copy this car. it cant be exact im assuming but lets get real close.

The CLA is impressive. Looks "normal" with a Cd like that.

 

[minispeed]

Read the history of the Honda insight.

The XL1 offers about the same, maybe even less. It doesn't have mass market appeal. It's also likely to be very expensive to make. The e golf shares a platform with other VW cars allowing a lot of the parts to be cheap and no need to go out and get new contracts, suppliers or a plant and assembly line to make it.

They did it as an engineering exercise just to say they could build the most fuel efficient car in the world. The ducatti powered version looks pretty sweet too!

 

[evboy]

mini, if using a existing car saves a company money, why dont we see a electric corvette or mustang. those cars have high maintenance bills after the warranty expires. EVs are reliable and dont cost a fortune to maintain. a electric sports car beats the pants off a gas one in my opinion. a electric viper would be unreal. wouldnt it be easier to assemble a electric viper compared to assembling a 10 cylinder engine and transmission to boot. is the viper engine and transmission cheaper to make than a battery pack and electric motor?

 

[Deleted member 14724]

mini, if using a existing car saves a company money, why dont we see a electric corvette or mustang. those cars have high maintenance bills after the warranty expires. EVs are reliable and dont cost a fortune to maintain. a electric sports car beats the pants off a gas one in my opinion. a electric viper would be unreal. wouldnt it be easier to assemble a electric viper compared to assembling a 10 cylinder engine and transmission to boot. is the viper engine and transmission cheaper to make than a battery pack and electric motor?

It doesn't matter if it is cheaper to make. They sell the Viper for $100k. Unless they could get people to spend somewhere in the same ballpark, they would not be making as much money, and Viper buyers do not strike me as the sorts who would pay that kind of money for an electric vehicle. The sounds of the V10 are a huge part of the appeal. That's one reason they did not go to a turbocharged V8, which would be lighter, more powerful, more efficient, and less expensive to make, according to a podcast I heard a while back.

 

[EVDRIVER]

mini, if using a existing car saves a company money, why dont we see a electric corvette or mustang. those cars have high maintenance bills after the warranty expires.

Weight, aero, battery space. Existing platforms are not usually appropriate or optimal for an EV.

 

[minispeed]

mini, if using a existing car saves a company money, why dont we see a electric corvette or mustang. those cars have high maintenance bills after the warranty expires. EVs are reliable and dont cost a fortune to maintain. a electric sports car beats the pants off a gas one in my opinion. a electric viper would be unreal. wouldnt it be easier to assemble a electric viper compared to assembling a 10 cylinder engine and transmission to boot. is the viper engine and transmission cheaper to make than a battery pack and electric motor?

They are also in it to satisfy a demand. There is demand for the corvette and mustang. Not so much for the viper it's more of a halo car but still enough demand to sell them. When they balance all the cost of engineering and testing a vehicle they have to project what sales they will have. If they added the cost of building an electric version along side the ICE version they would have to ask themselves, will the buyers be people who would have bought one of the ICE ones anyways if we just built that? I would say the smart money on an electric corvette and viper is that the only buyers would be people who were already shopping the ICE version.

In terms of high performance toy electric cars they still suffer problems on the track. The heat generated from taking a car to the track is huge and the batteries drop in performance when the temps go up. During a cool off session in the pits if a driver was to use a quick charger it would generate more heat and then wouldn't be cooling off.

I think it was car and driver or road and track that brought a Tesla model S to the track and to improve lap times they put a skirt on the bottom on the car and bought bags of ice to put under there between laps to improve consistency.

Now these are all things that engineers can find a solution for, but it would cost time and money. Since the engineers on these cars are tweaking ICE they can do it quicker and cheaper. If they are adding a brand new untested performance BEV system to the car they would have to start fresh, it would be a huge investment in R&D which would be much higher than the savings of sharing a platform.

When I said that using an existing car saves money that is past the point of an R&D commitment to building it. If they are already committed to building it and already know how to build it then there is money to be saved by choosing to build it on a platform that was designed to be modular and can be built at the same pant as the ICE cars.

Modular platforms are a huge thing now, it's been a big buzz word for years. VW was the first one to realize huge savings with it back in about 2000 with the golf/bettle/jetta/skoda/seat/audi tt/audi a3 and maybe more. Back then it was modular within a segment, ie compact cars. It then went to modular cars shared with CUV and eventually it is almost at or will be at soon modular within a full range. IE VW group would use the same basic engineering design for all affordable vehicles with a front transverse engine, 1 for all semi luxury that may even be able to do transverse and longitudinal engines and 1 for all luxury vehicles.