NIm 2011: Volkswagen Passat 2011

Volkswagen Bluemotion Passat With Optional DSG Gearbox India Launch By March 2011

Volkswagen India is soon to launch the upcoming Volkswagen Passat 2011 in India with BLUEMOTION technology and DSG automatic transmission as well as the manual transmission option. In this post, I will throw some light on Bluemotion and will also talk about DSG technology from Volkswagen.

Indian variants of VW Passat 2011 will come with two engine options: the 1.8 TSI petrol engine and 2.0 TDI diesel engine. The 1.8 litre TSI petrol engine gives 157.8 BHP of max power and 250 Nm of torque. The 2.0 litre TDI diesel engine churns out 170 BHP power. Both the petrol and the Diesel version will be available in Manual as well as DSG Automatic Transmission option.

What is Volkswagen Bluemotion?

Bluemotion is not one technology, but it’s a terminology for a series of cars which use highly efficient technologies which make these cars eco-friendly without compromising on the performance. The technologies used in Bluemotion series of cars include:

Aerodynamic design for less air resistance
Automatic Start/Stop or Micro-Hybrid System
Recuperation technology or regenerative braking
Low rolling resistance tyres for improved fuel efficiency
High fuel mileage with high efficiency modem engine with fine tuned MPFI and CRDI Systems
Low emissions in exhaust
Innovative DSG gearbox for reduced fuel consumption and better performance

and many such technologies which come together to make a really fuel efficient and low emissions car with good performance as well.

What is Volkswagen DSG Gearbox System?

DSG or Dynamic Shift Gearbox by Volkswagen is a very innovative fusion of good attributes of Manual and automatic transmission technologies. Manual transmission is very efficient and results in very minimum losses and high performance, whereas conventional Automatic transmission with fluid based torque converter system are expansive and result in performance and energy loss to some extent over the manual gearboxes.

DSG gearbox with dual clutch technology picks the best of the two systems and combines them into one system which uses two dry clutched and a mechatronics controller which changes gears automatically based on the calculations done by the electronic unit which monitors various sensors. So this unit as a whole, monitors the car’s speed accelerator position and automatically changes gears according to the needs of the driver. Since the gears are changed by an intelligent unit controlling the gear shift using mechanical controllers inside the system, there are very small energy losses unlike fluid based torque converters. This results in better performance, better acceleration and better fuel mileage. In layman’s terms, its like computer changing gears on a manual transmission like mechanism.

Prices for the Passat diesel variant are Rs 20.80 lakh for the base 2.0 TDI BlueMotion Trendline, Rs 23.80 lakh for the 2.0 TDI BlueMotion Comfortline and Rs 26.65 lakh for the top level 2.0 TDI BlueMotion Highline variant (ex-showroom, Delhi).