volkswagen

Tractors use diesel engines to pull heavy trailers cross-country, so it makes sense that diesel could do a good job of powering an SUV. Volkswagen attempts to prove the point with its Touareg TDI. Under its hood is a turbocharged 3-liter diesel V-6 that makes only 221 horsepower but a whopping 406 pound-feet of torque. That amount of twist coupled with the locking differential should give the Touareg TDI some off-road chops.

Read our review of the 2009 Volkswagen Touareg TDI.

It's taken many years, but we've finally gotten a few diesel cars to choose from in the U.S. BMW, Mercedes-Benz, and Volkswagen are all offering versions of their cars with diesel engines, and from what we've seen the fuel economy can be impressive. And unlike older diesel cars, these new models have good acceleration and no black soot spewing from the exhaust.

Check out five diesel cars you can buy in the U.S.

Porsche CEO Wendelin Wiedeking and financial director Holger P. Haerter have resigned from their positions "with immediate effect."

Wiedeking will receive 50 million euros ($71 million) in compensation, while Haerter will receive 12.5 million euros.

The German luxury automaker announced the shake-up after a meeting of its supervisory board that went on late into Wednesday night.

"The ultimate goal is to lay the foundations for creating an integrated car manufacturing company from Porsche SE and Volkswagen AG," Porsche Automobil Holding said in Wednesday's statement.

The news comes as Porsche and Volkswagen have been locked in a public power struggle concerning competing visions … Read more

Volkswagen's new Jetta wagon delivers sporty performance in a practical package. But we're used to those characteristics from Volkswagen. Its secret sauce is the new cabin electronics package, which includes hard-drive-based navigation with advanced features such as traffic, along with iPod integration for the stereo system. Now if they could have just included Bluetooth phone support, it would be complete.

Read our review of the 2009 Volkswagen Jetta SportWagen 2.0T.

Volkswagen may be late to the gate with hybrids and electric cars, but its recent partnership with Chinese automaker and lithium ion battery producer BYD shows that the German car company is a serious contender in the race to supply the masses with an electric car.

Volkswagen has already signed letters of intent with Sanyo and Toshiba as suppliers for electric batteries, and the company is currently exploring an arrangement with BYD to supply VW with lithium ion batteries for its upcoming plug-in and all electric vehicles, according to an article in the Wall Street Journal.

BYD is one of the largest manufacturers of lithium ion batteries. High demand and cost has made these batteries one of the road blocks to building affordable plug-in and electric vehicles.

However, the battery-maker-turned-car-manufacturer has been able to make stable and durable lithium ion batteries at half the cost of batteries produced in the west and Japan due to its safer, most cost-effective iron-phosphate-based lithium-ion technology. … Read more

Volkswagen and Garmin have teamed up to create Click & Ride, an integrated GPS system made exclusively for VW vehicles. The system is based on the Garmin Nuvi 7X5 Series of portable navigation devices and features a cradle that connects the device to the vehicle.

Click & Ride is similar to the Garmin integration that we saw in the 2009 Suzuki SX4, with the GPS unit being charged by the car's power supply while its audio is routed through the car's stereo system. The device features a 4.3-inch color touch screen, text-to-speech, lane assist, and traffic services … Read more

Electric cars have been getting plenty of buzz lately, but the development of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles is still going strong. The California Fuel Cell Partnership, along with Powertech Labs, National Hydrogen Association, and U.S. Fuel Cell Council, will seek to regain the spotlight with a road trip to demonstrate the practicality of these vehicles.

Twelve fuel cell cars from seven automakers will drive from Chula Vista, in Southern California, up to Vancouver, Canada, a trip of 1,700 miles. Vancouver was chosen for the destination because it will play host to the 2010 Winter Olympic Games, where a … Read more

If you watched the Olympics in Beijing, you may have noticed Volkswagen Passats being used as pace cars for some of the running and cycling competitions. More than just product placement, these Passats demonstrated a hydrogen fuel cell power train built by Volkswagen at its China research laboratory. The car is called the Volkswagen Passat Ling Yu hydrogen fuel cell vehicle, and we got a chance to drive it here in California.

Volkswagen brought a number of these cars to the California Fuel Cell Partnership (CFCP), a unique organization that works with major automakers such as Honda, Ford, Toyota, Nissan, Hyundai, and Volkswagen on fuel cell research. CFCP also promotes research into hydrogen generation and filling stations.

So, on a hot Sacramento day, we took the wheel of a car that just might be the future of automotive transportation. As the car is built on the Passat platform, it doesn't exactly look like the car of the future. The controls and ergonomics are all very familiar. But a kilowatt gauge takes the place of a tachometer on the instrument cluster.

Although driven by an electric motor, which doesn't make much sound in itself, the car produced a steady whining sound. Not unpleasant, but certainly noticeable, it came from the compressor used to push hydrogen into the fuel cell. The power-train packaging is similar to that of a gas-engine car, with the fuel cell stack, compressor, and control software under the hood, and hydrogen tanks at the rear axle. The car also has a lithium ion battery in the middle of the chassis, which provides electricity storage for the regenerative brakes and supplements the flow to the motor. … Read more

Far from corporate headquarters in Wolfsburg, Germany, the engineers at Volkswagen's Electronic Research Laboratory (ERL) take advantage of their proximity to high-tech companies such as Apple, Intel, and Google to develop new infotainment systems and interfaces for VW cars. We got a look at ERL's latest work, a system developed with Intel called the Global Open Research Infotainment Architecture, or GLORIA.

ERL Senior Engineer Eric Jensen walked us through the latest interface built on GLORIA. The test system we saw relied on a touch screen for all input, although a production system might use some hard buttons on … Read more