Today we drive the XL1, VW's amazing econo-car.
Being a plug-in hybrid, it should get 100 km per liter of fuel.
How does it run on merely diesel, though?
Time to hypermile our way to our special car expert Bas van Putten.
He lives in Norg in the north of NL. Time for an economic drive!
Wow, it looks like a race car!
- Hi, how are you?
- Better than you, probably. How is it to drive for so long?
- Ehr, long.
- It's so tiny. I saw it once in a garage, but looks even smaller here.
- Yeah, on the road people even tend to overlook you in this.
- Do YOU see THEM? With these camera's and screens?
- It works by day but not at night. But hey, let's drive!
Welcome Bas!
- Thanks! Fortunately, we don't mind being snug like this.
- Yeah, they accounted for that. The seats are offset a bit.
- You can't put them side by side. It's very narrow.
It's like 1.50 meter wide!
- Yup. Like a Citroën 2CV, really.
- There's little headroom. It's not for tall people.
- I'm glad we stopped at your place for coffee.
- Your head literally touches the door. It's not a seniors' car.
- Or one for girls in short skirts. That'd be embarrassing.
- So today, we are young, dynamic early adopters.
The engine is quite dynamic too, am I right?
- It's new technology, though comfort shouldn't suffer from that.
- Explain. This is a 2-cilinder turbodiesel engine, right? 48 PS?
We just use diesel power at the moment, despite this being a hybrid.
- Yeah, I emptied the battery earlier for the hypermiling thing.
It wouldn't go lower than 5.5 % charge.
- So what's the mileage on just diesel power?
- 2.5 liters on 100 km.
- Meh. That's no 1 on 100, eh?
- Lots of cruise control, coasting downhill and slowing down uphill.
- Could it make 1 on 100 under the best circumstances?
- With ease. Though it depends on the length of your route.
My 30 km commute can be done in just electric mode. No diesel needed!
- Fair enough, but more cars can do that. But this won't go wild in the weekend.
- Nope. While it costs 110000 euros.
So they build a few hundreds of this, making it a car for the elite.
- Indeed, that hardly benefits the environment.
- So how would that work out with 500000 examples?
- That could potentially be different for the environment.
- So this progressive body hides fairly conventional technology.
But it's efficient because of so many other factors.
That pretty much sums it up. So it's a bit useless.
- It's a showpiece, really.
- And we get to drive it. We are the coolest guys in the land.
Right, this Pentium 2000 is the charger.
So, you go to a charging station...
- No, you are at home near a power socket.
- Yeah, this won't work at a charging station. It'll get stolen.
- So this is how it all works.
- What a revolution... not.
- You just plug that in at home and in a few hours we can drive off.
- Just thinking of stowing this away makes me tired.
It's troublesome.
+ Very economical; Easy to use
- Not for charging station; Expensive