New VW Phaeton goes electric

Volkswagen has finally announced a concrete long-term fix to its emissions-cheating scandal by moving to a flagship with no emissions at all.

After rumours that the point-of-pride Phaeton would fall victim to the post-scandal cost-cutters, the embattled car-maker has announced it will instead turn the big limousine into its first all-electric model.

Volkswagen brand CEO Herbert Diess today confirmed the second-generation Phaeton -- released in Europe in 2013 but not sold in Australia -- would lead the Volkswagen Group’s 'charge' to an electric future.

Diess said the next Phaeton, due next year, will potentially stretch out to a 500km range on a single charge of its lithium-ion battery pack, using all-wheel drive and a radical recharging system.

While Volkswagen refused to put an on-sale date on the all-electric Phaeton, it will join a pack of upcoming Volkswagen Group battery-electric vehicles based on its MEB (Modular Electric Tookit), including the production versions of Audi’s Q6 e-tron and Porsche’s Mission E concept cars.

“The Volkswagen brand is repositioning itself for the future,” Diess said. “We are becoming more efficient, we are giving our product range and our core technologies a new focus.”

Insiders said the MEB architecture was not capable of supporting an internal combustion engine, even as a plug-in hybrid, and that Volkswagen was focused on demonstrating that it still had the engineering prowess to deliver step-change technology.

Volkswagen was chasing “pure electric drive with long-distance capability,” Diess said, confirming the Phaeton would remain its technical flagship for the next decade.

Unveiled at the Frankfurt motor show in September (which feels like a lifetime ago for the embattled Volkswagen Group), the Mission E promised more than 500km of battery range and a 0-100km/h sprint time of less than 3.5 seconds.

For its part, the Audi e-tron quattro concept at the same show delivered 370kW of power and 500km of range in a mid-sized SUV package, while belting out 800Nm of torque.

Both of the sexed-up concept cars are headed for production, using the same underpinnings as the upcoming Phaeton and it’s likely all three will be at least partly assembled in the Volkswagen flagship’s under-utilised crystal palace of a factory in Dresden, Germany.

The MEB system has been developed for all the Volkswagen Group’s brands, including Bentley, Seat, Skoda, Audi, Porsche and even Lamborghini, Volkswagen said in a statement today.

It has been designed to accommodate all body styles and will, according to Diess, “allow particularly emotional vehicle concepts, and will enable an all-electric range of 250km-500km”.

As part of the electric push on big cars, sources in Wolfsburg have confirmed Volkswagen Group is also close to finalizing a deal with Japanese supplier Hitachi for 800-volt superchargers that will double the charging speed of Tesla’s lauded free chargers.

Porsche sources said the superchargers would give the Mission E 400km of 'fuel' in less than 15 minutes of charging, which would be a game-changer for electric cars.