Ever think of the result of driving a car and then crash with an airplane? Here is an amazing example.

Yesterday an ATR-72 from TransAsia Airways, crashed into a river shortly after take-off from a Taipei airport. Just less than one second before hitting the ground, the airplane’s wingtip hit a Volkswagen taxi which was driving on the bridge. A footage captured by the dash camera from another car behind it showed us this unbelievable scene.

Both the driver and a passenger in the VW suffered minor injuries.

We all know that if you want your product to be successful on the market, you need to make it better than your competitors. This means you need to invest in new things.

Obviously Audi firmly believes this, and they’re taking action now. In an announcement made on last Saturday, Audi said it has planned to invest EUR 24 billion (approx. USD 29.3 billion) in research, engineering and production sites, over the next 5 years.

This budget represents a 2 billion increase over the past planning period. This is not a solo plan by Audi itself, it is actually part of a bigger initiative from Volkswagen, which plans to invest a total of EUR 85.6 billion from 2015 to 2019...

Volkswagen’s Electric Turbo Engine

There is one major drawback for turbocharged engines. The drawback  is called “turbo lag”, which means the turbo cannot enter into full boosting mode before there is enough exhaust gas to spool up the turbine.  This builds up boosting pressure! What does that mean? It means there is always a delay between the time that an engine receives command to provide high output, therefore the engine can actually provide that amount of output.

There is one solution comes to mind,  Don’t let the turbocharger depend on the exhaust gas to spool up.

This is how an electric turbocharger comes into play

The idea is pretty straightforward...

Today Volkswagen has announced the 2015 Passat GTE – the plug-in hybrid variant of the Passat product line.

The Pasaat GTE will be available in both of the sedan and wagon format. Information highlights are:

– 1.4L TSI 4-cylinder turbocharged petrol engine, 156hp
– Electric motor: 115hp and 243 lb-ft of torque
– Combined output: 218hp
– 6-speed dual-clutch transmission
– 0-60 time: less than 8 seconds
– Top speed: 137mph
– Maximum range (with battery fully charged and full tank of gas): 621 miles

Please enjoy the below gallery.

For months ago, we have reported a possible move that VW may be taking, that the next generation of the Phaeton will be “downgraded” to compete with significantly cheaper competitors such as the Chrysler 300 and the Ford Taurus.

Today there is an update from VW, it is simply that: the above plan is abandoned.

The next VW Phaeton will still be expensive, come with V8 and W12 engines, and may be priced way north of the $70k mark. The new Phaeton will be announced in 2018 as a 2019 model.