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For the second year in a row, the GTI “Coming Home” meet will take place in Wolfsburg. GTI fans and visitors will be able to access the event area in the Volkswagen Arena and the Autostadt from 10 am on 1 September 2018.

To bridge the gap until the next GTI meet in Wörthersee (Austria) in May 2019, Volkswagen is once again inviting fans to join the company in Wolfsburg at the end of the summer. In addition to a varied supporting programme for the whole family, a very special GTI procession is also planned as a highlight. Fans can drive their own GTIs through the Volkswagen plant where the first Golf GTI rolled off the production line in 1976.

“Last year’s event received incredible feedback from the fans. It was really exciting!” says Jürgen Stackmann, Member of the Volkswagen Brand Board of Management responsible for Sales. “The GTI family has an amazing fan base all over the world, some of whom will be travelling to our main plant. We can’t wait to say a big hello to our GTI fans!”

Volkswagen is also hosting the German première of the Golf GTI TCR Concept1. The vehicle was first presented at Wörthersee in May. With 290 PS and a top speed of 264 km/h, the concept vehicle is one of the fastest GTIs.

The 500 kW (680 PS) I.D. R Pikes Peak, Volkswagen’s first purely electric racing car, will also be showcased at GTI Coming Home Wolfsburg 2018.

Volkswagen has already set two records with the electric racing car, which was constructed in just eight months. On 24 June, Romain Dumas (F) not only improved the previous record for electric racing cars at Pikes Peak International Hill Climb 2018, but also set a new all-time record for the world-famous hill climb at 7:57.148 minutes. Just three weeks later, the 40-year-old Frenchman drove the I.D. R Pikes Peak to set a new electric vehicle record of 43.86 seconds at the Goodwood Festival of Speed – 3.48 seconds faster than the previous record set in 2013.

The event area opens at 10:00 am with the programme scheduled to start with the official welcome on the main stage of the AOK Arena at 11:00 am.

J.P Performance will be hosting the proceedings on stage. The day’s agenda includes events such as a motorcade and fan drives. To keep fans fed and watered, refreshments will be available from Wörthersee-style food trucks. This year’s event will also be partnered by the Autostadt, who will be presenting the Autostadt Tuning Award for customised Volkswagens. If you would like to take part, simply drive through the Photo Drive in the short-stay car park from 9:00 am. Professional photographers will be on hand to take shots of private vehicles alongside sporty icons such as the GTI W12-6502 Concept2. The well-known tuning expert Lina van de Mars will be hosting the photo shoot and introducing cars and their owners.

Participants will be given a link where they can download a copy of their photos. Any photos uploaded to Instagram with the hashtag #autostadttuningaward will also be entered into the Autostadt competition. The winner will be the photo with the most likes.

The main prize is a weekend at the Autostadt with an action-packed programme: the highlights include a meet & greet with Lina van de Mars and a trip in a Golf MkI GTI from the ZeitHaus collection.

Historic Golf and Beetle buses will travel between the Volkswagen Arena and the Autostadt, providing visitors access to both areas. The Autostadt event arena will open at 9:00 am and close at 4:00 pm.

The GTI procession through the plant that is planned for the afternoon will pass through the east gate via the central route down Mittelstrasse to Südstrasse, past the Brand Tower and on to the Kraftwerk. Vehicles will be required to register on site to take part in the procession, which will be open to up to 250 vehicles. If there are more people interested than places available, the time of registration on site will be used as the determining factor for participation.

Parking spaces right next to the stadium will be available exclusively for GTI drivers. Further will be signposted in the vicinity of the arena. Parking will be free and will be available on a “first come, first served” basis.

Article source: www.volkswagen.co.uk

Volkswagen Retailers are today, Thursday 9 August, making available to order a new turbo diesel engine to the all-new Touareg range. The 3.0-litre V6 TDI unit has an output of 231 PS and joins the 286 PS TDI engine that the Touareg launched with in June.

Both engines are available on the new model’s three trims – the Touareg SEL, Touareg R-Line and Touareg R-Line Tech. This enhances customer choice and results in a lower starting price for the car. The all-new Touareg SEL with the new 231 PS V6 TDI engine is priced at £48,995 (RRP OTR).

The 231 PS engine delivers maximum power from 3,250 rpm to 4,750 rpm. Peak torque is 500 Nm from 1,750 rpm to 3,000 rpm and the new engine maintains the same CO₂ figure (173 g/km) and the same towing capacity (3,500 kg) as the 286 PS unit.

Article source: www.volkswagen.co.uk

For a fully-electric racing car like the Volkswagen I.D. R Pikes Peak, the weight of the battery is especially important: it is the heaviest individual component – and each increase in weight has a detrimental effect on the car’s performance. It was logical for the Volkswagen Motorsport engineers to keep the batteries as small and light as possible in the record-breaking car. In addition to the sophisticated, weight-saving lithium-ion design, they are relying on technology that is already implemented in numerous electrically-driven production models: recuperation.

In a conventionally-driven car, much of the energy generated by braking is converted into heat and is lost. In an electric car, this energy flows back into the battery packs. The I.D. R Pikes Peak itself produces part of the electrical energy required for the two engines, which generate 500 kW (680 PS). “This allowed us to reduce the dimensions of the batteries and keep the vehicle weight, with driver, well under 1,100 kilograms,” explains Piotr Wrzuszczak, Head of Research and Development Concepts at Volkswagen Motorsport.

However, the Volkswagen Motorsport engineers had not yet had any experience with recuperation. They were supported by the technical departments for e-mobility at the parent company in Wolfsburg and at the Volkswagen Preproduction Center (VSC) in Brunswick. “The cooperation with our colleagues from series development was a big help and saved us a lot of time,” says Wrzuszczak.

Golf GTI TCR touring car as development agent 

To make the learning process easier, Volkswagen Motorsport first installed an electric drivetrain in a Golf GTI TCR from touring car racing. This experimental vehicle was used a mobile laboratory at the Volkswagen test site in Ehra-Lessien. The focus was on recuperation. “As we were not able to test on the original circuit at Pikes Peak, we compared the data harvested from the converted TCR race car with the data produced in the simulator at Volkswagen Motorsport. We had programmed the whole track as a model in the computer,” explains Wrzuszczak. 

The simulations were used to answer an important question: what portion of the energy required during the race will be produced by the on-board systems in the I.D. R Pikes Peak? A high percentage requires large generators, while big batteries need a correspondingly lower percentage – both options mean extra weight on board. “We finally settled on a value of 20 per cent as ideal,” recalls Wrzuszczak.

Recuperation must not affect the driving experience 

The engineers also worked on another challenge in the simulator and during test drives. Regardless of whether it’s a race car or a production vehicle: the driver should barely notice the recuperation process and it should not have any effect on braking. The balance between the mechanical brake and the braking effect of the electric motors, which work as generators during deceleration, is decisive. 

“The interplay between recuperation and braking is controlled by the on-board computer in the I.D. R Pikes Peak,” explains Wrzuszczak. Racing cars have far more extreme objectives than production cars, and the software is programmed much more aggressively. However, the production car also has to deliver the best braking feeling for the driver, make use of coasting phases and ensure that the battery recharged effectively without surges.

“One factor to be taken into account was limiting recuperation with a fully-charged battery right after the start,” adds Wrzuszczak. Energy management towards the end of the 19.99-kilometre race was also a complex task: with a racing car that uses a combustion engine, weight concerns mean that crossing the line with a near-empty tank is ideal. “We had a different task with the I.D. R Pikes Peak,” says Wrzuszczak. “Batteries that have nearly completely discharged do not perform as well. That is why our strategy was to avoid the charge level dropping below 30 per cent, even just before the finish line.” 

This plan worked perfectly at the “96th Pikes Peak International Hill Climb” on 24 June 2018: the I.D. R Pikes Peak delivered a great performance for Volkswagen driver Romain Dumas during the final kilometres leading up to the 4,302-metre summit – vital for the new track record of 7:57.148 minutes. 

Recording record times on the racetrack is not the objective for the vehicles in the I.D. Family, which Volkswagen will be bringing to market from 2020. The recuperation strategy applied during the record-breaking performance of the I.D. R Pikes Peak provided plenty of data for the development of the first fully-electrically driven production cars for this brand.

Article source: www.volkswagen-newsroom.com

• Electric racing car comes to iconic event in Jüchen as a double record holder
• Autostadt presents I.D. R Pikes Peak along with numerous racing legends
• Video: development history of the I.D. R Pikes Peak – from the idea to the record-breaking drive

From 03 to 05 August the time has come: the Volkswagen I.D. R Pikes Peak will make its debut in Germany at the 13th Classic Days at Schloss Dyck. The Autostadt in Wolfsburg will present Volkswagen’s first all-electric powered racing car at their “Passion | Pace | Performance” exhibition. With around 40 exhibits, ranging from the 1920s Bugatti to the current Volkswagen I.D. R Pikes Peak, the motorsport brand diversity of the Volkswagen Group will be presented, focussing on the past, present day and future. The 500 kW (680 PS) I.D. R Pikes Peak is the sporting forerunner of the I.D. family, the series of all-electric powered production cars that Volkswagen will be launching as of 2020.