VW Mk eight Golf will have 1.0-litre engine
Volkswagen’s next generation Golf will run on engines as petite as one litre through a ten speed automatic transmission and could use electrified assistance technology to budge them off the mark.
Tho’ Volkswagen’s Mark seven Golf is not yet a year old, work has begun on the two thousand twenty model and the rest of range which that share its platform. Speaking to Carsguide on the eve of the Frankfurt motor demonstrate, board member and powertrain chief Dr Heinz-Jakob Neusser confirmed the VW’s that are on the way will reflect that old sore that less can be more.
That is they will use smaller engines to carry a bantam weight of less than 1200kg in comeback for bettering VW Group targeted fuel consumption of five litres per 100km – in diesel and petrol versions.
“From Mark six Golf to Mark seven there is at least 60kg in average and up to 100kg less weight per version,” Neusser says. “There will be at least that reduction again for Golf 8.
“That is absolutely significant. How shall we do this? Possibly carbon fibre like the XL1 (VW’s futuristic examine car). We do a lot of steel improvement, warm manufactured steel. The net step for weight reduction is the use of aluminium inwards the car but we don’t need to have aluminium space framework.”
While carmakers emerge to be engaged in a game of one up gearmanship – eight forward speeds is the benchmark with Mercedes-Benz and Lexus about to implement nine gear boxes – Neusser speaks of ten coming in from mid-decade. But with a difference.
“This is not a six speed transmission with extra gears. They are intermediate. The idea is to shift the gears into different ways of moving. We have very brief ratios for the low gears, a broad spread for the six driving gears and two gears that are very long to bring the revs down as low as possible. Six driving gears is enough.”
And while doomsayers predict the end of diesel, Neusser says economy improvements will proceed to see turbo diesels run leaner than petrol/electrical hybrids such as the Prius. “We have the capability to achieve fuel economy improvements in both of around fifteen per cent,” he says. “We do a lot to bring spark ignited (petrol) engines to this economy level. But you have twelve per cent more energy in diesel in any given amount. That’s physics.
“I would say that for a brief term driver, five to ten km, it is more pleasant to drive spark ignition. But for long distance, motor ways, you can drive 1000km with a tank total of diesel.” The mainstream Golf model uses 1.Four turbo petrol engines. It’s two thousand four equivalent used a Two.0-litre unit. Neusser says there is a “strong strategy to increase this downsizing effect in the next generation”.
“But you come to very significant barriers. Looks at, say, a Passat and take the 1.Four litre turbo charged petrol engine which has no significant turbo lag. And say you substitute this with a 1.Two litre engine or a 1.0-litre engine with three cylinders which has the same torque at a lower level.
You will have the point if you decrease displacement behaviour gets worse and you will feel turbo lag. So we are working special charging supporting systems to close down this lag.”
An electrified motor? “Well, you’ll need to give us a few months to work out how we are doing it, but I want to announce this is well under way. The next generation cars in the middle of this decade, you will see the very first of them.”