In September of 2009, Audi of America President Johan de Nysschen loudly and proudly called the Chevrolet Volt "a car for idiots". He spent the next several months back-tracking.
a classic case of foot-in-mouth disease, de Nysschen was clumsily trying to make a couple of interesting points: (a) even though the Volt is fuel-efficient, savings at the pump will never justify the car's high price tag, and (b) because America derives so much of its electricity from coal, even the most severely gas-averse Volt drivers won't be doing much to improve the environment.*
But underneath those arguably compelling arguments, it was impossible to ignore a certain contempt that de Nysschen was expressing for electric and advanced hybrid cars.
De Nysschen's boss, Rupert Stadler, hasn't been much more enthusiastic on those fronts, though both men have often pointed to Audi's high-end e-tron concept car -- revealed around the same time as the "idiots" incident -- as proof that Audi was making room for electrics in its lineup. In fact, just last month, we were promised e-tron versions of every Audi model by the year 2020.
Audi has announced that it's delaying the rollout of its all-electric supercar, the Audi R8 e-tron, which was due to launch later this year. The folks at Wired see the situation as a bit more dire, reporting that the electric R8 has been completely shelved, due to the high cost and poor efficiency of today's batteries and the fact that Wolfgang Dürheimer, Audi's new head of R&D, put the e-tron program on the back burner.
And the R8 wasn't the only electric car at Audi HQ: the automaker is also testing an e-tron based on the smaller, simpler, cheaper A3. In nixing the R8, Audi didn't say anything about the A3 e-tron, so it might still be on-track for its rumored 2014 release. We'll see.
How enthusiastic IS the Volkswagen family is about electric and advanced hybrid cars.
Consider this: way back in 2007, Toyota promised hybrid and electric versions of every car in its lineup by the year 2020. Such vehicles -- particularly the Prius -- have been key in Toyota's continued growth, and the company clearly sees them as the foundation for a successful future.
Volkswagen has put Toyota in its sights, aiming to overtake the company and become world's biggest automaker by 2018. Do hybrids and electrics figure into VW's plan for world domination? And if so, where?
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