While Volkswagen has been saying that a 186-mile range electric e-Golf is scheduled to roll out, the “real world” number is reportedly more likely to be 124 miles traveled on a full charge. Frank Welsch, Volkswagen’s technical development boss, had said that a heavily revamped VW e-Golf will roll out by the end of this year or early next year. It has a claimed range of 186 miles per charge, up from the current model’s 190 kilometers (118 miles). However, when looking at the “real world” ratings issued by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the current e-Golf is more realistically going 134 km (83 miles) per charge. The next generation VW e-Golf will use new battery cells. The previous 25 Ah cells will be gone and new 37 Ah will be added. The battery capacity will go from 24.2 kWh to 35.8 kWh, a 48 percent increase. Tanneberger said the e-Golf is staying on course the company’s predicted 300 km (186 mile) range. He also added that the “real world” mileage will be about 200 km (124 miles).
However, it does make sense for Wolfsburg, where production line 3 has been dedicated to producing the e-Golf and Golf GTE models. It has the capacity to make 1,100 cars a day. As of late October the factory was producing about 100 total e-Golf and Golf GTE units a day - 60-70 of which were e-Golfs, each car with 8,000 distinct parts. While Wolfsburg takes care of vehicle assembly, certain components of the electrified vehicles are farmed out to satellite factories. As part of VW’s push toward electrification, it hired an additional 400 electric drive experts, and the e-Golf’s motor/gearbox unit is made at the Volkswagen components plant, a two-hour drive away in Kassel. Meanwhile, Volkswagen has battery facilities just 24 miles away in a Braunschweig factory. While VW used NiMH batteries for its early hybrids, the company switched to Li-ion for the Jetta hybrid in 2012. The e-Golf uses 25 Ah prismatic cells from Panasonic with nickel-manganese-cobalt chemistry.
VW packages the cells and integrates battery management controls at the Braunschweig factory, which employs 170 engineers. The combination of an outside cell supplier and in-house battery pack development leaves the company “relatively free to change from one cell supplier to another,” said Dr. Holger Manz, Head of Battery and Suspension Development at the Braunschweig plant. The battery development team evaluated many different options, including small cylindrical 18650 cells (the same package size as the cells in Tesla’s Model S), and in 2012 chose to go with Panasonic’s larger-format 25 Ah cells. The final production version of the e-Golf’s battery pack was designed in such a way that it does not require any active cooling - neither liquid nor forced-air. Originally, prototypes did utilize cooling in the initial testing phase, but the team decided it had enough heat dissipation on its own. “It has enough size and surface area that it dissipates for the amount of power that it needs,” said Dr. Manz. The e-Golf uses a total of 264 cells in 27 modules of either six or 12 cells, for 24.2 kWh of capacity.
