This year at the Frankfurt Auto Show Volkswagen will unveil two new production electric car, setting new standards in electric motoring. The Volkswagen e-Golf and e-up! are strategic products for the German car maker, as their e-motors, gearboxes and lithium-ion batteries are all developed in-house.
It did take Volkswagen a while to get into the EV game fully, but they seem to be preparing for it a long time the way Germans do before they attack!
The new electric brothers deliver decent performance and they are both fully-equipped with everything you’d expect to get in a normal car: automatic climate control with parking heater and ventilation, radio-navigation system, windscreen heating, LED daytime running lights and, in the e-Golf, LED headlights.
As for the performance, VW e-Golf is powered by an 85 kW / 115 PS electric motor with 270 Nm of torque. It goes from 0 to 100 km/h 10.4 seconds, and onto a top speed of 140 km/h. Consuming 12.7 kWh per 100 km, the e-Golf has a range of 190 km.
VW e-up!, meanwhile, gets a 60 kW / 82 PS with 210 Nm. This brilliant little car is pretty quick, with 0 to 100 km/h time the same as e-Golf, 12.4 seconds, and top speed of 130 km/h. It has smaller batteries than the Golf and therefore, consuming 1.7 kWh of electricity per 100 km, it has a range of 160 km. Still great for a car of this size.
The issue of long charging time, shared by all EVs, exist here as well. But there is a fast charger system that tops up the Volkswagen e-Golf and e-up! to 80 per cent capacityin just half an hour.