Volkswagen Up! News

Volkswagen drew attention on the streets of Stockholm with a normally silent electric e-Up making beat-box sounds – courtesy of hidden speakers and a talented passenger.There’s long been discussion about what kind of noise electric cars should make, and we can see the potential of music rather than just mimicking the sound of a conventional engine. But vocal percussion's not for everyone -- and given the car's fully electric perhaps the next ad should feature Australian rock band AC/DC.But before you get charged up about the idea of the VW e-Up and its big brother the e-Golf, be warned VW has no current plans to plug them into the Australian market.Watch the beat-boxing e-Up strut its stuff here.This reporter is on Twitter: @VladCARS 

Rumours of a new entry Audi based on the Volkswagen Up city car have once again surfaced, as the brand seeks to expand its model lineup to boost sales.Speaking with German industry title Manager Magazin, Audi CEO Rupert Stadler said that he intends to add new models to boost Audi’s annual volume as high as 2.4 million units by 2020, up from 1.455 million in 2012.Audi previously hosed down any hope of an Up-based Audi, despite the unveiling of the Urban concept at Frankfurt in 2011, but a cheaper sub-A1 model could be key in achieving these targets.The brand is understandably cautious in approaching a new mini-hatchback model, as their previous attempt with the A2 between 1999-05 was a commercial failure.Audi already has the Q5 and Q7-based Q6 and Q8 coupe crossovers in the works, but Stadler cited an Audi-badged Up and a compact people mover as further possibilities.  The development costs for such a drive on new models would likely hurt profit in the short-term, but Stadler expects fortunes to rise again as early as 2016. Audi is no stranger to using architectures from its Volkswagen parent, with the A1 riding on the same platform as the Polo, the A3, TT and Q3 with Golf, and the Q7 with Touareg.This reporter is on Twitter: @Mal_Flynn 

Australia has stalled on the electric vehicle starting grid and will miss out on the new wave of cars coming from Volkswagen, as the carmaker's local operation says there is insufficient demand.The German giant rolled out its first battery cars, the e-Golf and e-Up, at the Frankfurt motor show this week and set a bold goal of being market leader in electric mobility by 2018. With Volkswagen due to have 14 pure electric or hybrid cars on sale by next year, "no other automaker can match the broad range we have to offer", said chief executive Martin Winterkorn.It was starting its push "at exactly the right time" because the technology was mature. "The electric car cannot be a compromise on wheels; it must convince customers in every respect," Mr Winterkorn said.Australians, however, are unconvinced, according to Volkswagen's local arm, which will not import either electric cars or hybrids. "The market hasn't embraced these technologies and until there is sufficient demand we don't plan to offer them," said spokesman Karl Gehling.It was still early days for recharging infrastructure and the lack of government incentives for EVs was also "part of the challenge". Volkswagen already makes hybrids but Mr Gehling said they had been ruled out because they could not compete with the brand's efficient diesels.Only three carmakers have offered electric vehicles here and all have struggled to gain acceptance. Since 2010, when Mitsubishi was first with its iMiev runabout, just 602 EVs have been bought, with the overwhelming majority going to fleets.The high cost of the technology has deterred buyers, with the Nissan Leaf at $39,990 drive away the most affordable of the three after the company was forced to slash thousands off its price to stimulate demand. 

Look hard at this car. It's Volkswagen's next hatchback. Well, maybe look under the skin. It's the substance of the XL1 rather than the outlandish form that we'll see in VW's small, affordable passenger cars before the calendar flips to decade three.While the limited run XL1 is on sale in Europe for some $160,000 to collectors and the uber green, its essence will run tomorrow's Ups, Polos, Golfs and more besides. The trick is to look past the hip level height, carbon fibre body, gull wing doors and to see the plug-in electric battery on which it can run for 50km alone and the two-cylinder diesel engine which stretches the range for a further 500.This combo makes for emission free city travel and open road travel at some 0.9 litres per 100km, though it can motor at 160km/h. Hence the company label "1.0-litre car" - of which the XL1 is the showroom precursor - refers not to capacity but range.Having clambered through the Bladerunner doors, you could be in almost any contemporary VW, albeit the brand's only two seater. The switchgear and most of the dials are from the Golf, the wheel is pure GTI, the gear stick operates a seven speed DSG auto, the removable Garmin multi-media screen is found in the Up.There's no mirrors and no need for them - two rear facing cameras, one mounted in each door eliminate blind spots. That should be disorientating and so it is for about 30 seconds at which point it replaces intuition.That's also  so of the drive. The XL1 glides as silently as any electric vehicle though a good deal more efficiently than any on the road with almost on-existent wind resistance. Amid the plethora of innovation there's at least one delightful old world note. The steering is purely mechanical, entirely devoid of assistance, just like a Lotus or my 1971 Kingswood.Merging onto to the autobahn, the diesel engine is engaged via finger tip on the Garmin. It chugs crudely but almost immediately into life, ensuring that you needn't remain on the inside lane for long. When our brief test  is over, I'm exhilarated in a way that only some fast and fabulous cars have made me.Parked nearby the XL1 at Bensburg Castle near Cologne this week, where VW runs a pre Frankfurt Show event, is a Bugatti Veyron - the outrageous 16-cylinder quad turbo supercar. Haven't driven one of those. Probably won't.But it's proximity makes you realise the XL1 is every bit as much a supercar in its own sense. And while it is the single most expensive VW in the brand's near 80-year history, its heart and lungs will be part of your and my driving reality. 

Volkswagen to continue $12,990 drive-away pricing on Up next monthThe cheapest European car on sale in Australia – the Volkswagen Up – just got cheaper. The tiny city runabout started at $13,990 plus on-road costs when it arrived in showrooms last October, translating to a drive-away price of more than $17,000 according to the company’s online calculator.However, Volkswagen is advertising the Up at $12,990 drive-away – a saving of at least $4000 – on 2012-build models. The only catch is that you must be able to drive a manual transmission, as Volkswagen has no plans to introduce an automatic version of the Up in Australia.When asked how long the company could maintain this low price, the boss of Volkswagen Australia Anke Koeckler told News Limited: “It will extend into February, we are not doing something like that for just two weeks.”When asked if Volkswagen was losing money by selling the Up at that price – it is effectively a $10,000 car before on-road costs are added – she said “no, we don’t”. When asked how long the $12,990 price would continue, she added: “We will see how it will be accepted.”Volkswagen said it was obliged to trim the Up’s price to match the cheaper Asian brands. Suzuki’s Alto has been on “special” at $11,990 drive-away for several months, while Mitsubishi last week launched the Mirage at $12,990 drive-away – with a $1000 gift voucher or bonus to cut the cost of the car to $11,990 drive-away.“There is a lot of movement unfortunately in this segment right now from competitors; we needed also to move into this spot,” Koeckler said. “We knew the Japanese competitors might get onto the tacticals immediately after the launch and this is what is happening. In this price-sensitive sub-light segment, customers are looking at prices. We have to make sure we are in the game.The Volkswagen Up was designed and engineered in Germany but it is made in Slovakia. It is key to the company's plans to become the world's biggest selling automotive brand by 2018, and has won numerous awards, including World Car of the Year.Meanwhile, Volkswagen Australia is yet to confirm if will introduce the turbocharged GT variant of the Up, a pint-sized version of the Polo and Golf GTI hot hatches. “We are also looking into derivatives but it’s a bit too early to say which derivatives we are looking into in Australia,” Koeckler said.This reporter is on Twitter: @JoshuaDowling 

Designed for European cities but right at home in Australia, the Up is a great first car or second commuter runabout. "The three-cylinder engine is why we call it the giddy-Up," James Stanford said at the COTY judging.The doors shut with a thunk, the turning circle is tiny, but the boot is surprisingly roomy. It's not a particularly brisk drive, but it gets along well in traffic and - provided you're prepared to use the gearbox - is quick enough for suburban roads and highway cruising at 110km/h.The braking is solid, it grips pretty well in corners, and all the controls and light and easy to find. There is some suspension clunky over low-speed potholes, and it's never going to win a cornering contest, but the ride smoothes over 80km/h and it’s fairly quiet.We'd much prefer to have the choice of an automatic, but the Up! is what it is. That means it has to be compared against its size and price rivals, where it comes up a winner. You can say that it will cost $17,000 to put a fully-loaded Up! on the road, but that would be a tasty little car with equipment you cannot get in something like an Alto or a Spark. It feels more substantial - read that as safer - than an Alto, Spark or Micra, as well as having parts and assembly work that lives up to the Volkswagen badge. It's not a Polo or a Golf, but it's impossible to build that sort of car for $13,990.So what you get is an Up! that resets the bar for the smallest cars sold in Australia today, and in a good way. It deserves four Carsguide stars, not when you think about cars as classy as a Benz C or a Porsche 911, but because of how it relates to its direct rivals, and the way it beats them.Volkswagen Up! three-doorPrice: from $13,990Engine: one-litre fuel-injected 12-valve three-cylinderTransmission: five-speed manual, front wheel drivePower: 55kW @ 6200rpmTorque: 95Nm @ 3000rpmFuel use/emissions: 4.9l/100km, tank 35 litres 95RON PULP; 114g/kmBrakes/safety systems: Driver and front passenger airbags, front seat side/thorax, stability control (City Emergency Braking, Brake Assist (EBA), Anti-lock Braking System (ABS), Electronic Brakeforce Distribution (EBD), Traction Control), rear parking sensorsDimensions: Length 3540mm, width 1641mm, height 1476mm, wheelbase 2407mm, cargo volume 251 litres, weight 880kgWheels/tyres: 14in steel wheelsWin $5,000 in our People's Choice competition. 

And Volkswagen is likely to oblige but it's likely to be a GT rather than GTI (then again perhaps not?) It's more than a year now since the Up! made its debut at the Frankfurt motor show. At the time VW's engineering boss Dr Ulrich Hackenberg promised no less than six spinoff models, including the GT Up! the Up! for fast roads as he described it. Since then stories have continued to emerge about a more powerful version and Volkswagen has done little to nip them in the bud. In fact, some magazines in the UK are claiming to have already driven a pre-production version of the car. The bog standard Up! gets a 55kW 1.0-litre three cylinder engine. But the car has obviously been engineered to take more power than this rather conservative figure. The pre-production model, Dr Hackenberg's personal mule, puts out more than 80kW to get things moving. This combined with the car's lightish 880kg kerb weight will produce a much livelier drive. “Such an engine would offer drivers of the barely 900 kg GT Up! more affordable driving fun than hardly any other vehicle,” Hackenberg said when introducing the car. “This would be very much in the style of the ancestor of the sporty small car the first generation GTI. “When an ‘I’ is added for injection, its identifier refers to the Volkswagen icon. And the GT up! is performing on the same playing field.” The concept shown at Frankfurt is painted in a sporty pearlescent white. Designers have completely redesigned the front bumper. It looks completely different, with a large, central cooling air intake with a grille in honeycomb look similar to the one used on the Golf GTI. Outside there are two cooling air intakes for the brakes; integrated in these openings are the wing-shaped LED daytime running lights. Prominent on its sides are the painted side sills, black door mirrors and 17-inch alloy wheels with 195 tyres. A roof edge spoiler generates plenty of down force at the rear axle and powerful exhaust note is generated by a double flow exhaust system with two visible chrome tailpipes one on the left and one on the right. Inside, the GT Up! features an anthracite black interior. Offering a contrast to the anthracite are the centre seat panels with their blue checked pattern and the “paint blue” rings around the air vent nozzles. Painted in a sophisticated glossy black are the dashboard and upper door trim panels. The black roofliner is coordinated with them. Of the spinoff versions only the Up! itself and electric E Up! have been officially confirmed so far for production, a spokesperson for Volkswagen Australia said. But the spokesperson said the comments by Dr Hackenberg suggest the Up! GT is a strong possibility for production.  

Anyone who thought Volkswagen might be resting on its laurels after a frenetic 2011 will have had their mind changed already.After revamping the bulk of its list last year, the German giant will invade the light car market with its Up! and managing director Anke Koeckler has confirmed a starting price below $15,000 when it arrives on October."We'll be launching the Up!, which will have a major impact on how we are perceived by Australians, we will have a car which will be positioned and priced under $15,000, so you can enter the VW with a car under $15,000," she says.The VW is aiming to maintain its premium position but with sharp pricing, which is likely to mean pricing restructuring for the Skoda brand to maintain the hierarchy."We have to look at the pricing to make sure Skoda is not priced above Volkswagen - that's something we have to look at, Skoda is getting new and more models but we have to make sure it's priced and positioned under VW, this is the worldwide strategy," Ms Koeckler says.So far this year, the company is ahead of its sales targets and is seeing the results of its new-model assault on the Australian market last year. Also so far this year the VW brand in total is 31 per cent up year-to-date - more than 6400 vehicles - led double or triple-digit percentage growth over 2011 figures by Tiguan, Touareg and Passat, among others."All the launches from last year are paying off and we are seeing the significant impact now in the sales now." "At a certain stage there might be some consolidation, but we're still looking for a significant increase because of the model impact ... we are ahead of budget and forecast," she says.Strong performances in the SUV segment - particularly from the Tiguan compact SUV - bode well for the brand, and Ms Koeckler. "We wanted to do this earlier but we are waiting until the end of the year is the Passat Alltrack, it might have a good successful niche as we can see with the Subaru Outback, a key competitor for that car, that's on sale in November," Ms Koeckler says.The arrival of the new New Beetle has been postponed until early 2013, but next year's key for the VW brand will be the arrival of the next Golf, a major model for the brand. "The new Golf Mk 7 will be unveiled at the Paris Motor Show, it's our plan to have it on sale here in the first half of 2013," she says. 

This year’s Geneva show includes about 180 new car debuts, and the line-up certainly hasn’t disappointed us.A delicious parade of top-shelf exotics and concepts will hog the spotlight of course: the stunning Lamborghini Aventador J, the Volkswagen-linked Giugiaro Brivido, the Infinti Emerg-E, the Ferrari F12 Berlinetta will all fight for attention.But in the face of economies across Europe struggling – in some cases stumbling towards a crash – it’s clear from the unveilings that there’s a strong move towards downsizing.Skoda’s Citigo, Volkwagen’s Up and even the Volvo V40 are all practical takes on a smaller and leaner world.But the SUVs still get a look-in, with the likes of Mitsubishi flagging their plug-in Outlander, Nissan’s Hi-Cross clearly hinting at the next X-Trail – although they won’t come right out and say it.And Bentley proving yet again that money doesn’t even need to buy style and taste with the ugliest thing on wheels since … possibly ever.Electric, hybrid and range-extender technology is everywhere at Geneva, showing that - in Europe at least – it has long moved past being some kind of geeky indulgence. Every carmaker is talking economy and value. And there’s a lot more chatter about global platforms, with VW taking it to a planned one-size-fits-all extreme.What does it mean for the buyer? At the very least, while our economy looks pretty healthy here, the disasters elsewhere are having a strong impact on industry attitudes, and that means carmakers are going to try harder than ever to win over our wallets.Expect to see leaner cars, smarter cars and – faced with increasing competition from emerging industrial giants like China and India – better value cars. That’s good news for all of us. 

Kids aren’t usually a factor in Car of the Year judging.  But child friendliness rates highly with women buying cars – and with women judging cars.The countdown has been kicked off to decide the Women’s World Car of the Year, and the kid factor is one the judges pay a lot of attention to.“Statistics show that women drive children in cars significantly more often than men – and that means women need to take that into account, both when buying and as judges of cars,” WCOTY president Sandy Myhre said from New Zealand.“Any woman who has grappled constantly with child seats and belts and children considers those things when looking at buying a car.  Men might too but the fact is, women drive children in cars more than men.“Women would not consider that aspect in a Porsche 911 more than a bloke. The point is, it can be considered in these awards - and that is one of the points of difference in these awards.”Myhre points out that significant research into buying habits show that in addition to buying for themselves, women have a major influence in household purchase decisions for big ticket items.Ford Australia, for example, says their research shows that women are behind the majority of purchases of the Territory SUV – either as single women buying one, or in influencing the joint decision with their partner. “A report from Mattingly & Associates in Australia concluded, in part, that businesses that didn't understand this influence would be hard-pressed to stay in business.  That report was aptly called 'When I've Made Up Our Minds',” Myhre says.However, the kid factor is just one of the criteria by which the 2012 Women’s World Car of the Year will be judged.There are four categories in the Women's World Car of the Year – Family Car, Luxury Car, Sports Car and Economy Car. Points are allocated to each of ten criteria: driveability, engineering, comfort, child friendliness, style, interior, storage, dashboard efficiency, carbon footprint and colour range.The 20 judges from eleven countries have submitted their own personal short list and more than 300 cars were suggested. These individual choices were then whittled down to form a master list of 32 in terms of popularity. Judges will now allocate points for these cars from a criteria list.The announcement of the winning cars in each category and the supreme winner will be made before the end of March. The supreme award trophy and category certificates will be presented to the car companies concerned at the Mondial de l’Automobile 2012 – the Paris Motor Show – in September. The supreme trophy will this year be made in The Netherlands. Category-winner certificates will be designed at Peartree Studios in Colerne, UK.The first winner of the Women's World Car of the Year was the Jaguar XF in 2010 and the trophy made in South Africa was presented at the Jaguar boutique showroom in Knightsbridge, London. In 2011 there was a dead-heat between the Citroen DS3 and the BMW 5 Series. The two trophies made in India were presented at the Frankfurt Motor Show in September 2011.