VW Tiguan GTE Active Concept
Volkswagen wants Detroit Motor Show
goers to momentarily forget about its ongoing diesel scandal and focus on its
hybrid future with the new Tiguan GTE Active Concept.
In VW’s own words, it’s an “extreme
off-road version” of the sportier Tiguan GTE plug-in hybrid concept we saw at
last year’s Frankfurt Motor Show. As such, it’s based on the European
specification, five-seater Tiguan, and not the North American model that will
come to the U.S. in 2017 with a longer wheelbase and available seven-seat
functionality.
Compared to the Tiguan GTE study, the
Active model sports bigger wheels shod in off-road tires, increased ground
clearance, added body cladding all around, skid plates, auxiliary spotlights on
the roof, and the German brand’s 4Motion all-wheel-drive system.
It has a plug-in hybrid system that
combines a 1.4-liter turbocharged gasoline engine making 148 hp and 184 lb-ft
with two electric motors generating 54 hp at the front wheels and 114 hp at the
rear, for a total system output of 221 hp. The car starts in all-electric
‘E-Mode’ via the rear electric motor, but when there is loss of traction, the
front wheels are engaged “within fractions of a second”. All-wheel-drive can
also be activated manually through the 4MOTION Active Control or when GTE-mode
is selected. The TSI gasoline unit drives the front wheels through a six-speed
dual-clutch transmission.
VW says that the vehicle can cover up to 32 km in all-electric mode, while the driving range, based on a
battery capacity of 12.4 kWh and a 16.9-gallon fuel tank, is 580 miles or 933
km. In E-mode, the Tiguan PHEV has a top speed of 70 mph or 113 km/h.
