Featured Volkswagen XL3

Better, yes (subjective), but don't really like...nor would I buy either.

 

With or with subsidies?

 

No subsidies needed. The only "help" is a grid of H2 stations...

 

What only a trillion dollar network of hydrogen stations? No that isn't it. There is over $30K worth of credits from the governments of japan, US, and California on each one. Toyota has had a legion of lobbiest getting those subsidies whiich it says it needs. I would feel better if we could cut them down to phev level subsidies.

The XL1 is a fail because of the prosche dmo vehicle. What? Yep the 918 used all the tech other than extremely small frontal area. IIRC porsche sold the batch of 918 of them for about 700 million euros. They could have sold more, but then it would be a production model, and they want to add the tech to a lower cost car. BMW already has - the i8. btw world wide sales of the i8 are much higher than the mirai.

= carbon fiber phev with efficient turbo charged engine ;-) XL1 is much more efficient than teh mirai which is much more efficient than the i8, but i8 trades off efficiency for fun to drive and high tech toys that people actually want.

 

I'm pretty sure Mirai is cheaper than XL1.

 

In production cost? I wouldn't make an actual bet of that.

The BMW i3 REX starts at $46,250 to the XL1's $146k. It has similar length and width to the XL1, but is around a foot or 300mm taller. It has a carbon fiber body over an aluminum frame. The SL1 is the same except that the frame is an magnesium alloy. The i3 has a smaller gasoline engine, which will be cheaper than the Xl1's diesel, but it has a larger battery. Unless that diesel engine is a one off just for the XL1, I think a safe assumption is that both car's drivetrains will equal out in cost.

Most of the price difference will be in the car bodies. The XL1's frame will be more. Same with the CF body, but that's because BMW has been investing in lowering the cost of CF production. Really, much of the price difference between the two cars is because the XL1 is a low production model that is largely hand built.

The Mirai uses a more traditional materials in the body. Production cost is likely in the range of the hybrid Camry to Avalon body. If it weren't a largely hand built, low production model. The smaller battery pack should be less than the XL1's. So will the simpler EV drive train compared to the diesel serial/parallel hybrid one. The big cost will be the fuel cell.

The Mirai probably is cheaper than the XL1 because of the use of exotic materials usually seen in racing and high end performance cars versus automotive steel with some high strength allies of, and some aluminum.

The i3 does use those exotic materials, and it is much cheaper than the Mirai. There is no argument that the Mirai has a roomier passenger cabin, specially for the rear passengers, but it likely has the same cargo space at best. We can't say how much the fuel cell and hydrogen tanks cost, but BMW is getting the CF costs down to where it can compete with steel in higher end cars.

 

Am I missing something here? Isn't the XL1 unobtainable - I thought the limited "production" run of 200 sold out 1-2 years ago and no more are being made? (VW's calling it a "production" model seems a stretch, something we have come to expect from VW)

And the XL3 is just as ephemeral, a rumor of something VW MIGHT make:
What Is the Volkswagen XL3 Hybrid?

How many Mirai's have been produced?

 

I believe that the only way to buy an xl1 today or a porsche 918 is on the used market, and the prices are much higher than they originally sold for.

VW groups P918 has been much more sucessful as a proof of concept than their vwXL1. Together there are 250 + 918 of these vehicles running around. The 918 made porsche a profit, I'm sure the XL1 vehicles did not cover R&D. Roughly there have been 3300 orders for the mirai, and around 1100 built. In the US many of the 300 orders are delayed on the part of the customers, and they can cancel at any time. In Japan a large percentage are the government and business leases that may not take delivery until 2017 or 2018. Mirai like XL1 is limited serial production. The mirai hype machine is much louder. 918 has already born competitor production version bmw i8. The i8 is sold in 50 countries, the US is the best selling with about 3000 units sold. The i8 will roughly save the same amount of gas versus a similar sports car per year, as a mirai will save versus say a camry hybrid, and it doesn't do well versus a fusion energi. Given that the mirai proved nothing, the clarity was the proof of concept, the 918 is a much more important and less hyped car. I expect this tech to trickle down to lesser cars in a decade. The XL1 shows what you can do when you value efficiency above all else, but it also doesn't save that much gas versus say a less compromized c-max energi that doesn't even have a dedicated platform.

XL3 is more of transfering some of the jetta hybrid and xl1 tech to build a prius like car. We don't know if its a real name or a code name, but the car is green lighted, and it won't be much more efficient than a prius. It does appear to have 170 hp, so much better acceleration and probably higher price than the prius and ioniq, which my guess translates to lower sales ;-)

 

The hundreds built were cheating pre-diesel-gate scandal too. Odds are, it ain't really a "clean car" any more than their other clean diesels ... unless you're driving it on the dyno.
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