The Volkswagen Golf GTE is set to become the first hybrid hot hatch on the market, with Volkswagen diversifying the niche, complementing the historic Golf GTi and Golf GTD.
Taking the acronym apart, GTE will mean GT Electric. But a hybrid hot hatch? There are already diesels, so why not a hot hatch with electrons in the mix? No doubt we live in interesting times. This sportier positioning ends up bypassing the market's typical perception of hybrids, such as household appliances in the automotive world. Injecting some of the “spicy” Golf GTi DNA into the future Golf GTE shouldn't do any harm.
We still don't know the final garments (the image only shows a test prototype), but there is already data on performance, extrapolated from the Plug-in Hybrid prototype already presented. In the sprint from 0 to 100 km/h, the future Volkswagen Golf GTE should be able to fulfill it in 7.6 seconds, equivalent to the Golf GTD and the maximum speed is 217 km/h. The driving group is identical to that of the Audi A3 e-tron , also already presented. This means that we find the well-known 1.4 TSI petrol engine with 150 hp, combined with a 102 hp electric motor, with the two engines offering a total combined power of 204 hp and 350Nm of maximum torque. The electric motor is powered by a set of 8.8 kWh lithium batteries, allowing the Golf GTE a maximum autonomy in electric mode of up to 50km, and in this mode, a maximum speed of 130km/h.
With the possibility of purely electric displacement, the official consumptions and emissions are impressive: only 1.5 l/100km and some miserable 35g CO2/km . It will be interesting to find out to what extent these numbers will be echoed in actual use.
All that's left now is to wait for the year to progress, and towards the end of it, we'll get to know, live and in color, Volkswagen's hybrid hot hatch, the Golf GTE.