AT last week’s Paris Motor Show, there were very few electric-only
cars, but many hybrids, which is not how VW sees the future.
While the company showed its hybrid Passat, Volkswagen’s head of
powertrain development Dr Heinz-Jakob Neusser told the media at the French round
of World Rally Championship last week that hybrids will eventually be replaced
completely by all-electric cars.
Neusser said battery packs with ranges between 500 and 600
kilometres could be available as early as 2020.
Neusser said Volkswagen was working to steadily increase battery
density with the same determination manufacturers typically exhibit when trying
to squeeze more power and fuel economy out of an internal-combustion
engine.
He said the e-Golf, which currently has a range of around 190 km
per charge, will in its 2017 generation have a range of 300 km.
Between now and then, VW will also look to put in battery charging
infrastructure, the same way Elon Musk did for his Tesla cars.
In the opposite corner, Toyota’s Satoshi Ogiso, managing officer at
the Toyota Motor Corporation and a key executive behind the company’s drive to
Fuel Cell Vehicles (FCV), is also planning a lot of infrastructure.
But Toyota has moved away from plug-in electrics and is staking a
lot of money on developing cars that use hydrogen to generate the electricity to
power cars.
Toyota admits that next year’s launches are baby steps.
Ogiso told the BBC that Europeans in UK, Germany and Denmark will
next year be able to buy FCVs, as well as customers in Japan and
California.
Other manufacturers that are meanwhile gambling on hybrids include
Audi with an R8, Lamborghini with its Asterion LP1 910-4 and the BMW i8
— which arguably did more to make hybrids sexy
than any other car in recent years.
Hybrids will also power the next generation of Porsches, McLarens
and Ferraris.
