FRANKFURT, Germany — Amid the torrent of new electric vehicles released this week at the 2009 Frankfurt Auto Show, Volkswagen was probably the least bashful about its entry, the VW e Up!, referencing it somewhat hyperbolically as "the Beetle of the 21st Century" while remarking on the boxy three-door's "cult potential."
Well, maybe not, at least not stylistically. As clever as some of the technical solutions are on this scaled-down sibling to the original Up! concept, the exterior design of the e Up! is utterly conventional — VW's design team would have you believe they followed minimalist Bauhaus principles — and not in the slightest Beetle-esque.
One thing VW did right, however, was continue to stretch its future New Small Family (the formal name for the extended Up! product range) architecture — or, in this case shrink it — to accommodate a pure electric that actually does display some creative thinking under its conventional skin. So now the automaker has shown us the NSF platform in three sizes — small (e Up!), medium (Up!) and large (Space Up!) — with a variety of powertrain possibilities, from conventional gas and diesel engines to an electric motor to a hydrogen fuel cell.
Look for the standard-issue Up! to reach the market in 2011, with the pint-size, battery-driven e Up! slated for production in 2013, a year after the Space Up! microvan hits the street.
Examples of creative thinking on the e Up! include 3+1 seating that manages to squeeze four adults into a vehicle that measures only 125.6 inches long overall, 14 inches shorter than a Fiat 500. Another is the solar roof that helps keep the lithium-ion battery pack charged up on sunny days and has a provision to cool the vehicle's cabin when it is parked and powered down.
The powertrain installed in the e Up! is pretty straightforward stuff as far as modern EVs are concerned. The 60-kilowatt electric motor is mounted ahead of the passenger compartment and drives the front wheels through a single-speed variable transmission that is controlled from a rotary knob on the console. The motor is torquey — it peaks at 155 pound-feet — but because the microcompact weighs nearly 2,400 pounds, acceleration is stately: zero to 60 mph takes just over 11 seconds, and speed tops out at 84 mph.
Nor are the battery and charging system particularly cutting-edge stuff. The Li-Ion pack has a capacity of 18kWh, providing an effective range of about 80 miles between charges. On a typical 230-volt household circuit in Europe, the e Up! will take up to 5 hours to fully charge, although VW claims the vehicle could be charged to 80 percent of its capacity in an hour at a municipal recharging station.
Inside Line says: Hey, the e Up! has some clever touches, but no real "cult potential" that we can see at this early stage. And what's with that self-important exclamation point?! — Paul Lienert, Correspondent
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