Volkswagen says it will substantially expand the range of its electric driven e-Golf when a face-lifted version goes into production in December. That would close the performance gap that has opened up with the freshened BMW i3.
Officials say the e-Golf will be able to travel 300 km in the European driving cycle on one charge, up from 190 km previously. Under normal driving conditions the battery should be sufficient for occupants to travel 200 km VW says. That is identical to the new i3.
The Golf is VW’s best-selling model, with nearly 1.1 million built last year. But the electric version accounts for only about 1% of all Golf volume.
The U.S. is the biggest market for the electric Golf, with 47% of the model’s production exported to North America compared with 37% for Norway, a key market for EVs because of incentives.
This year, Volkswagen expects to build 12,140 e-Golfs in Wolfsburg, Germany. It is assembled bumper-on-bumper alongside conventionally powered sibling model to keep a ceiling on costs.
Volkswagen says the new e-Golf battery will have nearly 50% higher energy density thanks to an identical improvement in the charge its prismatic lithium ion cells can carry. Despite the more powerful cells, Lieber said the recharging time is unchanged because the charger can now feed as much as twice the energy into the 35.8 kilowatt-hour battery as before.
While VW expects greater energy efficiency over the current 12.7 kWh required for 100, officials did not quantify the improvement.
The car will be capable of accelerating from 0 to 100km/h in 9.2 seconds and reach a top speed of 150km/h. The current e-Golf’s 0-to-100km/h time is 10.4 seconds and its top speed is 140km/h.
