New Volkswagen Touareg: More details

More details have emerged about the long-awaited third generation of Volkswagen's largest SUV, the Touareg, the countdown to which was heralded by an official teaser sketch this week.

Fitted with seven seats for the first time, the three-row Touareg will launch later this year, probably at the Beijing motor show in April.

By the end of this year globally, it will dive back into the heavy-punching large SUV fight, swinging away with the likes of the BMW X5, the Mercedes-Benz GLE and Land Rover Discovery.

There's also the Porsche Cayenne, Audi's Q7 and its upcoming Q8 and the Bentley Bentayga, all of which share their MLB Evo architecture with the new Touareg.

Whisper has it the flagship's flagship powertrain will be a mighty V8 twin-turbodiesel for a vehicle that will be about 60mm longer and 25mm wider than the existing, second-generation Touareg, which will sit on the same wheelbase as the current Cayenne.

The new Touareg is expected to be about 65kg lighter than the outgoing car, so some of the smaller-engined variants should slip well below the 2000kg barrier and towards around 1950kg.

The big breakthrough, though, will be inside. Top-spec versions of the Touareg will be fitted with what Volkswagen calls its Innovision Cockpit.

While some believe that to be a new name for its current Active Info Display, our sources insist the Innovision Cockpit will be a curved glass touch-screen that runs up to 28 inches wide.

If accurate, that will mean the instrument cluster and the infotainment screens will have merged, rather like the screens in the Mercedes-Benz E-Class and S-Class, but with a curve to make the apps and infotainment more easily accessible to the driver.

The new Touareg will sit above Volkswagen's new Arteon in terms of both price and size, though the sedan will remain the brand's style leader.

It is all part of a serious SUV push that will take the Volkswagen Group from virtually nowhere in SUVs to having 19 high-riders (including an EV) in 2020 and about 40 cars.

Sources insist other engines include 3.0-litre V6 petrol and diesel power, plus a variant of the 4.0-litre, Audi-developed twin-turbo petrol motor that powers the Cayenne S and the Q7.

All Touaregs will use at least mild-hybrid powertrains employing the Group's 48-volt electronic systems and the integrated starter-generator to capture energy when decelerating and use it to help the engine on hills or at low speeds.

There is also a locked-in certainty of a plug-in hybrid version to help meet Euro 7 CO2 emissions targets.

The next Touareg will also have access to technologies like active anti-roll bars, active rear-wheel steering and three-chamber air suspension systems.

It will also be capable of Level 3 self-driving, though Volkswagen has already warned that while the hardware will be ready to go at the start, the country-to-country legislation won't be. So, it's at the ready, set, wait stage.

While some insist that Touareg production will move to China, our sources say it will remain in Bratislava, in the Slovak Republic, for the foreseeable future.

As evidenced by the Beijing show reveal for the T-Prime concept that previewed it two years ago, the new Touareg is expected to draw the majority of its sales volume from China.

That's in part because it won't be sold in North America, where the seven-seat Atlas (a left-hand drive SUV that's not sold here but remains firmly on Volkswagen Australia's wishlist), is Volkswagen's flagship SUV.

One senior Volkswagen engineer we spoke to admitted it "broke my heart knowing the Touareg won't go to the US".

America is slated to receive two new Volkswagen SUVs in 2019 and 2020, but neither of them will be Touaregs.

The 2018 Touareg was designed by Klaus Bischoff's team to contain strong hints and elements from the Arteon, including a lot of horizontal lines in the grille and the rest of the front end.

As you can see in these latest spy shots, Volkswagen has run with the idea of expressing the technology of the Touareg's new aluminium-heavy platform with sharper creases in its body.

The Touareg will be one of the five new SUVs that Volkswagen Australia promised in August 2016 to release by early 2019, including the then-new Tiguan, this year's all-new Tiguan Allspace seven-seater and, more than likely, the yet to be revealed Tiguan Coupe.

Since then, however, it has said its all-new compact SUV, the T-Roc, will be delayed until 2020 due to strong European demand.

Further afield, expect an all-new off-road SUV based on the next-generation Amarok ute, which would bring the number of models in the German car-maker's SUV line-up from just two currently to six.