Volkswagen BlueTDI - too little too late

Volkswagen will be displaying a new Passat Variant BlueTDI on the Paris exhibit next week. The engine is a commonrail diesel 2-liter, with 143 hp. This car will have a fuel consumption of 5,5 l/100 km (CO2: 144g/km). The numbers for the sedan version is 5,2 l/100 km (CO2: 139g/km).

Am I the only one not at all impressed by these numbers? BMW 520d, which has been available for a while now, gives you more power (177 hp) and lower fuel consumption (5,1 l/100km) and CO2-emissions (136g/km).

The small SUV segment - Will Volvo make it?

We've got some really interesting small SUV's coming this fall, all competing within the same "premium" segment: Audi Q5, Mercedes GLK and Volvo XC60. I've already expressed my frustration with the Volvo and its hopelessly outdated engines. This frustration isn't getting any better after looking up some numbers:

Audi Q5 2.0 TDI (170 hp/350 Nm) - Fuel consumption: 6,7 l/100km CO2: 175 g/km
BMW X3 2.0d(177 hp/350 Nm) - Fuel consumption: 6,5 l/100km CO2: 172 g/km
Mercedes GLK 220 (170 hp/400 Nm) - Fuel consumption: 6,9 l/100km CO2: n/a
Volvo XC60 D5 (185 hp/400 Nm) - Fuel consumption: 7,5 l/100km CO2: 199 g/km

All these cars are equipped with four wheel drive, and have comparable engine specs and prices, although the Volvo is a bit on the slow side when it comes to acceleration, and a bit expensive (comparable to the Merc and BMW, and more expensive than the Audi). And if you want an XC60 with fuel consumtion on par with the other competitors, you'll have to wait until the spring, and buy a 2,4D with 163 hp and front wheel drive only (consumption: 6,5 l/100km). Now, who will buy that, instead of a proper four wheel drive from Audi, BMW or Mercedes? And why on earth didn't Volvo keep the brilliant ethanol-enigine from the prototype, that could have given it an advantage amongst its competitors? I don't know. I just don't know.

Way to go, Hummer!

Old news, maybe, but the 2009 Hummer H2 will be available with a flexfuel (E85) engine, and the plan is to have all Hummer models biofuel-capable by 2010. As opposed to Ford, Hummer gets it (bleeding red numbers for quite a while might have been an eye-opener). We still want to drive large 4-wheel-drive cars, but we want to do so in an environmentally friendly fashion, and without handing our hard earned money over to the oil cartel OPEC.

One question remains, though... Seeing as the conventional H2 guzzles over 2 liters of fuel/100 km, what kind of numbers can we expect when driven on ethanol? Will the car break the 3 liter barrier? If so, it had better come with a 200 liter fuel tank, so I don't have to stop by the gas station on my way to and from work every day.

Ford Kuga - what a big mistake

Well, not the car itself. It actually looks decent, and hopefully drives decent as well. The big mistake is the new engine option available from early 2009: The 2.5 liter, 5-cylinder old fart that's available in several Volvos and Fords. Looking at the numbers , no one will be impressed:

Combined fuel economy: 9,9 l/100 km (10,3 l/100 km with automatic transmission)
Top speed: 208 km/h.

The sad part is that the engine itself is actually available as a flex-fuel (E85 and gasoline), that can be found in the Volvo V70, for instance. Why Ford didn't just go for that one is a mystery to me. Have they failed to see the massive demand for clean and cheap fuel? Oil is not the future.

No one buys new cars - and here's why

Apparently the new car sales in Germany have dropped by 10,4% in August compared to August last year. The situation is more or less the same in the rest of Europe, and the US. The car manufacturers seem to be blaming the world economy, but the answer is probably more simple than that:

After the oil price surge this spring, and promises from the infamous oil cartel to keep the prices on a ridiculously high level of over $100 a barrel by reducing production when necessary, what people want is as much independence from the oil as possible. In other words, we're all sitting and waiting for all the interesting new car models that are just being postponed over and over again: The electric vehicles, the plug-in hybrids, the cars that run on alternative fuels. As an example, Volkswagen appear to have postponed their Golf plug-in hybrid until 2012. That will definitly cut into the Golf sales up until then.

So, in short: Give us the cars we want, and we'll buy them. Keep postponing them, and we'll keep postponing our car purchases.