VOLKSWAGEN TO DRIVE IN PASSAT BLUEMOTION THIS YEAR
Frugality in India is all set to reach a new height with Volkswagen India’s new offering Passat. Equipped with VW trademark Bluemotion technology. With this, the new Passat will be eco-friendly as well as fuel efficient, exactly what India needs and wants.
Coming to what exactly this technology is, brake energy recuperation, DSG duel clutch gear box, gear shift indicator and an extremely fuel efficient engine with start-stop system and NOx exhaust treatment which all work together to make a Volkswagen more economical and to reduce emissions.
All this frugality and eco-friendliness comes after lot of clever research work and lots of money, which VW boffins have spent on making low friction drive shafts, super reduced rolling resistance tyres, longer gear ratios and wheels made of something called flow-formed steels with thin sections to reduce its weight.
There is no official word on the car’s pricing but we reckon it could be around the INR 25+ lakh bracket. The car will be launched simultaneously with the company’s new ‘Think Blue’ campaign in March.
What is Volkswagen Bluemotion?
Bluemotion is not one technology, but it’s a terminology for a series of cars which use highly efficient technologies which make these cars eco-friendly without compromising on the performance. The technologies used in Bluemotion series of cars include:
- Aerodynamic design for less air resistance
- Automatic Start/Stop or Micro-Hybrid System
- Recuperation technology or regenerative braking
- Low rolling resistance tyres for improved fuel efficiency
- High fuel mileage with high efficiency modem engine with fine tuned MPFI and CRDI Systems
- Low emissions in exhaust
- Innovative DSG gearbox for reduced fuel consumption and better performance
and many such technologies which come together to make a really fuel efficient and low emissions car with good performance as well.
What is Volkswagen DSG Gearbox System?
DSG or Dynamic Shift Gearbox by Volkswagen is a very innovative fusion of good attributes of Manual and automatic transmission technologies. Manual transmission is very efficient and results in very minimum losses and high performance, whereas conventional Automatic transmission with fluid based torque converter system are expansive and result in performance and energy loss to some extent over the manual gearboxes.
DSG gearbox with dual clutch technology picks the best of the two systems and combines them into one system which uses two dry clutched and a mechatronics controller which changes gears automatically based on the calculations done by the electronic unit which monitors various sensors. So this unit as a whole, monitors the car’s speed accelerator position and automatically changes gears according to the needs of the driver. Since the gears are changed by an intelligent unit controlling the gear shift using mechanical controllers inside the system, there are very small energy losses unlike fluid based torque converters. This results in better performance, better acceleration and better fuel mileage. In layman’s terms, its like computer changing gears on a manual transmission like mechanism.
I can’t go further detailing it and making it sound boring for you, its better you watch a video which explain it far better than the text in just 6 minutes:
I hope such technologies are used more often and get more affordable so that they can be used by common people in India. Especially in urban traffic, an automatic transmission makes a lot of sense, and one with DSG makes even better sense with the fuel efficiency and performance.
