The 20% increase in fuel economy is fine but it will not change the fact that the Touareg is still one of the most polluting vehicles in the VW collection. Hopefully in a few years VW will do a PHEV version with a 30 miles pure electric range or better at 70 mph and an EPA rating of 100+ mpg. That would be really exciting in my opinion. Admitted it would also likely add some 14000 to 18000 USD to the price of the car but it would at least give people and companies who can afford it a choice to drive large SUVs with a good conscience.

Clearly a great need for these hybrid SUVs. Since global warming doesn't exist and we are entering a new ice age there will be a great demand for these all terrain vehicles just the thing to take your kids to their local school.

No new technologies and no new batteries are needed to reduce fuel consumption for automobiles. People are trained to drive at high speeds on the Autobahn and motorways and to demand automobiles such as this one that have the horsepower to do it. For every car built and advertised, the advertised fuel consumption (8.2 L/100 km) should also be converted to average horsepower over the test cycle to show how overpowered and therefore inefficient vehicles such as this are. At 20% efficiency, very good for a large automobile engine, it would require 33.5 gallons per hour to operate this engine at 245 kW. Wikipedia shows 36.6 kWh/US gallon, but this is thermal and not electrical energy. This power could supply electricity to 300 German dwellings. Obviously all automobile engine operate at a small fraction of their available rating and an even smaller fraction of their advertised rating. The Citroën 2CV car, ("2 horse power") indicates how low an average power is actually needed to operate a vehicle in the city for useful transportation "The car would use no more than 3 litres of gasoline to travel 100 km (78MPG)". The first vehicles sold seem to have had about nine horsepower available. The TATA NANO will put many Indians into automobiles as the 2CV did French people and the Model T did Americans and the Volkswagen did Germans. There are very few people who would refuse the use of a loaned Volkswagen Beetle to replace a failed Mercedes just to finish the daily commute to work.

In fact it is now time to convert all automobile production to full electric transmissions and then automobile engine-generators can be used to to supply massive ammounts of grid power when needed. The stationary automobiles can be directly connected to the Natural gas supply system for fuel. The induction motor-generators and power electronics developed by AC Propulsion is well suited for this type of operation. The problem is that it would require a very large transformer and heavy cables to put this much power into the grid.

There is a similar problem for fast charging for full electric vehicles, which is best done with large natural gas fueled engines if done at all, and the electrical grid can be spared the sudden jolt equivalent of 300 electric cookers suddenly connected in one appartment block.

Full electric transmissions can reduce the size of engine needed for fast acceleration substantially and thus allow the use of more efficient smaller engines as is done in diesel electric locomotives to accelerate large trains. Electronics now allow the use of simple cheap induction motors and generators and not a single gram of high performance permanent magnet material needs to be used. Copper wire to copper wire connection without electronic conversion can be used at Autobahn speeds for slightly higher efficiency. Autobahn speeds; however, exclude any possibility of meaningfull efficiency. ..HG..