Recently, Germany announced a goal to have 1 million electric vehicles on their country’s roads by the year 2020. As if to be completely in sync with their country of origin, Volkswagen pulled a Golf from their proverbial magical hat. The Golf in question is being call the Golf blue-e-motion Concept and sports an all-electric powertrain.
The concept car gets its power from an 85kW electric motor that achieves 199 lb-ft of torque. Electric power is stored by the on-board lithium-ion battery, which has a capacity of 26.5 kilowatt-hours. The expected range of the Golf blue-e-concept is in the neighborhood of 93 miles—similar to other vehicles on or coming to market in the next year.
For those familiar with the Volkswagen Golf models, the electric version will retain its front-wheel drive configuration, but will swap a multi-gear transmission for a one-gear transmission. VW also claims that it will sprint from 0-60 in 11.8 seconds. Top speed will remind American’s of vehicles from the 80’s with the Golf concept being able to achieve only 87 mph. That all aside, VW expects that the EV version of the Golf will go into production by 2013 with a test fleet of 500 vehicles ready to hit the road as early as next year.
Expect prices to be in the neighborhood of the 2011 Nissan Leaf and stay tuned for more information on the blue-e-motion concept and everything else small cars.
[Source: Leftlane]
