Has Volkswagen solved range anxiety?

VW’s drag race

The industry's response to range anxiety has mostly been to have more battery, but batteries are heavy, expensive, and require mined lithium, nickel, and cobalt. More battery also makes a car heavier — you can see the problem.

But Mission Efficiency accomplished its feat on a 54.9 kWh battery and, for comparison, electric SUVs carrying batteries close to double that barely manage half the distance.

A smaller battery places more emphasis on aerodynamics, weight and rolling resistance. With that in mind, VW’s Mission Efficiency has a drag coefficient of 0.158. That's a world record for a road-legal car, beating the previous holder — Volkswagen's XL1 from 2013 — at 0.189. Mission Efficiency three world records were certified by Record Institute Germany in its category for near-production, everyday four-seat cars, which rules out science projects and one-off specials.

At motorway speed, most of the energy a car burns goes on shoving air out of the way rather than overcoming the road beneath it. Give it a shape that slips through more cleanly, and everything else gets easier.

The Mission Efficiency’s motor is a single 135PS (99kW) unit, roughly a Polo's worth of power, because it simply doesn't need any more, but the shape is only half of it. Patented deflectors sit inside the rims to stop air from churning around, smooth covers go over the wheel faces, and the rear wheels are clad entirely, since wheels and arches account for up to a third of a car's drag.

The tyres have a quarter less rolling resistance than the EU's top grade demands. The structure is aluminium stiffened with carbon fibre, and inside there's almost no trim, no stereo beyond a portable Bluetooth speaker, and no screen. Together, that makes it over 30 per cent more efficient than a standard ID. Polo above 50mph.

Real-world consumption amounted to 6.89kWh per 100km. In money-in-the-wall terms, that's around nine miles per kilowatt-hour, or roughly three times better than the average electric SUV manages. There's even a 370W solar array on the body, adding up to 30km of range a day if you park it somewhere sunny.

The XL1 rides again

The XL1 was Volkswagen's 2013 moonshot. A teardrop-shaped diesel hybrid that did 261mpg and cost a fortune, built in tiny numbers from carbon fibre and wishful thinking.

Mission Efficiency is the same idea built from parts that actually exist at scale. It uses components from VW's MEB+ platform — the architecture underneath forthcoming mainstream cars like the ID. Polo and ID. Cross — rather than exotic one-offs. It seats 2+2 and swallows 481 litres of luggage. It is, in other words, something like a real car.

Will any of it reach a showroom?
Concept cars are where manufacturers showcase their best ideas to see how the room reacts, but VW's design chief has pointedly described Mission Efficiency as slotting into the company's new family of electric vehicles.

Expect it to be called something else — the VW Padel perhaps – but either way, the record stands, and the argument has been made: the fastest route to a usable electric car may not run through the battery factory at all.

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