Audi and parent company Volkswagen are working on cars that get almost 300 miles per gallon and could come to market in three years. These are real cars — really light cars — using hybrid or possibly plug-in hybrid power plants. The Audi car would use a small gasoline engine, the VW a small diesel engine. The Audi could be based on the Mini Cooper-size Audi A1 or an even smaller chassis. They would not be cheap, but they also wouldn’t be unattainable, $100,000-plus toys for environmentally conscious actors and Wall Street’s money shufflers.
Here is the story, pieced together from multiple sources. Even by the usual standards of rumor-based reporting confirmed by citing other rumor-based stories, there’s a lot of conjecture. For instance, the Audi media site issued a release about its high-mpg car — but it cites Autocar and Forbes, rather than Audi officials. Still, where there’s smoke, there’s often fire.
In 2002 at the Frankfurt Auto Show, Volkswagen unveiled the highly stylized L1, two-seat concept car (pictured in the gallery below). “L1″ was a reference to a car requiring just 1 liter of fuel to travel 100 kilometers, equal to 282 imperial miles per gallon, or 235 US miles per gallon. A second version was shown in 2009 and VW said the XL1 at that point weighed just 380 kilos (838lbs). Even the smallest cars today in the US are 2,000 pounds.
A follow-on XL1 (pictured above) appeared at the Qatar Motor Show in 2011. This vehicle has a two-cylinder diesel engine. Diesel engines are more efficient than gasoline engines, especially since diesel carries 15% more BTUs per gallon (or per liter, for that matter). It would have brake power regeneration and an electric motor to increase efficiency.
Audi’s super-efficient car would use a small gasoline engine of 1.0 liters, almost certainly turbocharged, with a hybrid drive as well. The body would be a combination of lightweight steel, rather than aluminum, and carbon fiber. If it’s based on the Audi A1, it could be as much as 157 inches long (4.0m). It would seat four and have creature comforts such as air-conditioning. Within Audi, it’s simply called the “1.0-liter car.” Audi believes economy could reach 282 mpg or 0.83 liters per 100 km. Since the stories were filtered through the British media, that’s almost certainly an imperial mpg comparison, so we’re down to 235 US mpg. Still, not too shabby. Whether the car would come to America is uncertain.
The most efficient cars in the US today are electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids. The more energy drawn from the electric outlet, the greater the efficiency. On a cost basis, traveling the same distance on electric power can be one-half to one-third the cost of doing it with gasoline. The Mitsubishi MiEV gets 112 MPGe (miles per gallon equivalent), with the according Honda Fit EV getting 118 MPGe and the Scion IQ EV getting 121 MPGe, according to the EPA. Ford is crowing about its upcoming 1.0-liter turbocharged gasoline engine Ford Fiesta getting around 45 mpg highway, 40 mpg city, which would make it the most efficient non-hybrid, non-electric. The most efficient hybrids, the Toyota Prius and Toyota Prius C, get 50 mpg combined.
So what Audi and VW are talking about is creating and bringing to market vehicles that will be twice as efficient as EVs now available and four times as efficient as today’s best hybrids. One challenge Americans have is butt size: We’re one of the world’s best-fed (overfed?) countries. In the last 50 years, the average American has gained 25 pounds (11kg), and the part about making cars smaller doesn’t sit well with us. And vice versa.
