2011 Volkswagen Touareg Hybrid First Drive
Isn't Nickel-Metal Hydride Like So Y2K? Precisely, Says VW

By Matt Davis, Contributor | Published Mar 12, 2010

As we remember, it probably happened about 2004 when Volkswagen had just introduced the U.S. to the Wolfsburg company's first SUV, the Touareg. We found ourselves crawling over the red rocks of Moab, Utah, and the Touareg really impressed us with its standard all-wheel-drive system, which had an off-road-ready dual-range transfer case.

But Volkswagen has always had trouble selling the Touareg in the U.S. Did you spend your childhood years dreaming of someday owning your very own Volkswagen-built Jeep or Volkswagen-built Land Rover? Neither did we.

So we have here the 2011 Volkswagen Touareg Hybrid, the second-generation Touareg. It's absolutely not intended for anything rougher than muddy, snowy dirt roads. The new Touareg will not even have dual-range off-road gearing.


The 2011 Volkswagen Touareg is more Main Street, more Fashion Island Mall. The look is conservative, and what could be more family-friendly than the new hybrid model that joins the V6- and V8-powered versions?

Good Ol' Dependable NiMH
We kept looking at the 2011 Volkswagen Touareg Hybrid and then looking again. There was supposed to be a pack of nickel-metal hydride batteries here, like those heavy battery packs from a few years back that rendered many an electric dream fruitless. VW chose this Sanyo NiMH battery pack — weighing 145 pounds and mounted under the Touareg's cargo floor in a sturdy crash-protective cage — because NiMH is an energy source with which most consumers are familiar and is virtually 100 percent safe to be around. The choice also keeps costs down significantly.

Under battery power, the 2011 Volkswagen Touareg Hybrid can reach 31 mph before dipping into the 329-horsepower supercharged V6 engine up front. But the distance it can run thus is only 1.25 miles. So, is there a point? Jochen Bohle, VW project manager in charge of Touareg Hybrid powertrain development, says, "Really, the key — practically speaking — is not running on just the battery power for extended periods. Nobody actually ever does this on any normal drive cycle day to day, so its importance was not that great."

Really, it's a truly hard-core launch that only a Koenigsegg or Pagani or a Ferrari FXX can approach.
In the end, this first hybrid effort with the Touareg (and 2011 Porsche Cayenne) is a test bed, and it is meant to feature secure technologies that don't inconvenience the normal internal-combustion perspective of its buyers. No plugging in is needed, and there's enough power and torque to accelerate this 4,938-pound utility vehicle to 60 mph in just 6.3 seconds and make the 2011 Volkswagen Touareg V8 FSI 4.2 blush in shame. The hybrid has the same 7,716-pound towing capacity as all Touareg models, not something of which the 2010 Lexus RX 450h can boast.

Different Targets Nowadays
The first-generation BMW X5 and Land Rover LR2 are no longer the immediate competition for the Touareg family, which has been built on the VW Group's PL72 platform. Today, we're talking the Acura MDX as the bull's-eye here, followed by the GMC Acadia, then the BMW X5 and Infiniti FX. For the Touareg Hybrid, most VW engineers stare at the Lexus RX 450h or Mercedes ML450 Hybrid.

Just looking on paper, the second-generation Touareg (and Cayenne) kind of crushes the Lexus and Mercedes. Although U.S. pricing has yet to be released, the 2011 Volkswagen Touareg Hybrid is much cheaper in Europe than its Japanese and German rivals.

Both the Lexus and Mercedes have two-mode split systems, vastly less towing capacity, less ready power and torque, and a less smooth transition between internal combustion and electric motoring. The Touareg Hybrid with its parallel system feels utterly natural, whether you're accelerating from a stop or coasting at speed.

Living With It
As on all upper-crust products from the VW Group these days, the Touareg is very quiet as we tool around the streets of Florence or hit the open autostrada for some 85-mph cruising. The onboard systems and satellite navigation are intuitive to use through the VW's touchscreen interface. The on-screen monitoring of the hybrid system is not too different from the best we've seen in other premium hybrids.

There's a useful increase in room, as front headroom has increased 2.3 inches and shoulder room has grown 2.2 inches. Now the rear seats also can slide forward and back in a 6.3-inch range, while the seatbacks can adjust to three separate inclinations. Overall cargo room suffers from the hybrid adaptation, of course, with 15.3 cubic feet available behind the second-row seat and 55 cubic feet available overall.


Though it's bigger on the inside, the second-generation Touareg is just 1.6 inches longer overall, with a wheelbase that's 1.5 inches longer, while it stands 0.7 inch taller. Aerodynamically the Touareg is slightly sleeker, with a 0.36 Cd versus the previous 0.38 Cd. The 2011 Volkswagen Touareg Hybrid also comes standard with 18-inch Goodyear Eagle F1 low-resistance summer tires, 255/55R18s front and rear.

What a Lightweight
The new Touareg has all-wheel drive with a Torsen-style center differential, but it definitely benefits weightwise from the deletion of the low-range gearset and off-road rear diff. In addition, some 154 pounds have been removed from the chassis alone through shrewd metallic moves, particularly in aluminum used for the two axles.

Touareg for Touareg, this new, second-generation beast has dropped between 450 and 520 pounds. Despite all of the added heft of the hybrid systems in the Touareg Hybrid, it weighs just 4,938 pounds, some 148 pounds less than the first-generation, V6-powered Touareg.

Even the Aisin eight-speed automatic transmission weighs less than the previous six-speed automatic. The fuel tank has also been reduced in volume from 26.4 gallons to now 22.5, although improved fuel economy maintains cruising range.

Hybrid Drive(-ing)
All the powertrain engineering packed into the 2011 Volkswagen Touareg Hybrid largely goes unnoticed, even though there is always a lot going on.

If you lift off the throttle on a downhill while cruising, the clutch between the Bosch electric motor and the supercharged V6 uncouples, bringing the engine to a halt at any speed up to 100 mph. At restart moments, the electric motor acts as the starter motor, so the action is quick. In prototypes, this moment was a bit clunky, says engineer Bohle, "and the final four to five months were spent both on the software and on managing to get the two clutch packs either side of the integrated electric motor to spin at the same and correct speed before restarting the engine on throttle."

But it's not all sleepy-hollow hybrid softness, kids. There's a style of launch control here called Power Start (which your VW dealer will perhaps not even know about). With your foot on the brake, start the engine, put the transmission lever in the Sport setting at bottom, release the brake and then just floor the accelerator. In this moment, all power supply sources are told to hook up and work together, and it's like someone swinging the business end of a sledgehammer into your chest when the electric motor and forward clutch snap into the V6's flywheel.


Really, it does a truly hard-core launch that only Koenigsegg or Pagani or a Ferrari FXX can approach. We repeated it several times and nothing broke, and the VW personnel were practically urging us on to try it again and again. All in the interests of science, you understand.

Tip of an Iceberg
The 2011 Volkswagen Touareg Hybrid and its sister 2011 Porsche Cayenne Hybrid will be the only models sold worldwide by the VW Group using this strictly parallel hybrid system with a NiMH battery pack. Everything that follows will use lithium-ion batteries developed by partnership between VW, Toshiba, Sanyo and BYD (the Chinese manufacturer).

A Volkswagen Golf Hybrid will soon arrive with a lithium-ion battery pack. VW has a plan for total world domination in the hybrid field by 2018, and part of the plan is to ensure that the VW Jetta and Passat models scheduled for assembly in VW's new plant in Tennessee get this hybrid technology from the start.

Now let's hope VW can start selling this Touareg SUV that we've always liked, although we'll have to see what the price is going to be.