The Volkswagen Golf eR1, which made its public debut at last weekend’s GP Ice Race event in Austria, is already a key part of the firm’s electric performance heritage - but it’s also a showcase for future possibilities.
From the outside, the machine looks like a lightly modified Volkswagen Golf TCR touring car. But under its surface lurks the electric powertrain technology that has allowed Volkswagen to set a string of records, and that's being honed for use in a planned line of hot ID variants from the firm’s R performance division. These will sit above the ID GTX range, the first of which will be seen later this year.
Autocar was among a select group of media invited for a short passenger ride in the eR1, on the airfield-based ice track used for the GP Ice Race festival in Zell am See.
What is the Volkswagen Golf eR1?
The eR1 started life as a test mule for the 671bhp twin motor, all-wheel-drive electric powertrain that propelled the Volkswagen ID R hillclimb car to course records at Pikes Peak, the Nurburgring, Goodwood and China’s Tianmen mountain. To test the powertrain while the ID R’s endurance prototype-based chassis was completed ahead of the car’s launch in 2018, Volkswagen Motorsport installed it into a modified Golf TCR touring car bedecked in a development camouflage livery.
Once the ID R was launched in the build-up to the 2018 Pikes Peak International Hillclimb, the electric test mule might have been consigned to history – but it’s now been dusted off, updated and repurposed.
Volkswagen will use the machine to showcase its electric performance technology through a series of event appearances and videos, as well as to test and develop systems that could be used for future electric R car powertrains.
What’s the Volkswagen Golf eR1 like?
For what is effectively a motorsport test hack, the eR1 is remarkably well-resolved. That’s helped by its new designation (eR1 is more catchy than the test mule's moniker of 'e-technology test car') and fresh livery, but comes mostly down to the team's hard work at refining and upgrading the machine since its former role.
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James Attwood: the paid
James Attwood: the paid spokesman for VAG. It never ends. This is not an article, but yet another advertisment for VW masquerading as news. Its pathetic how Autocar stoops so low to their masters in Germany....and I thought Brexit was for real