Volkswagen to Showcase All-Electric Car in Frankfurt

Despite that the company recently revealed that it won't advance with its production plans for the 2009 BlueSport roadster concept displayed at the 2009 North American International Auto Show in Detroit, Volkswagen still has enthusiastic plans when it comes to electric cars. According to a report by autoexpress.co.uk, the German manufacturer will showcase at the upcoming Frankfurt Auto Show in September an all-electric car that could compete with Opel's Ampera.

Details are obviously inexistent at this point but the news was backed by Peter Thul, head of communications at Volkswagen, who confirmed the company will indeed unveil an electric model later this year at Frankfurt. Furthermore, he revealed the upcoming model won't compete with Tesla's electric vehicles and emphasized it won't rely on the BlueSport concept revealed in January.

“We will have a host of concept cars at Frankfurt and although we haven’t yet decided, we want to show an electric car,” he was quoted as saying by the aforementioned source. “We will not launch a niche market car just to show our electric technology,” he continued. “We would only launch a car that people could actually buy at a reasonable price. It would need to have a range of 200km, be safe, reliable and able to be used everyday. It would be a car that fits with the Volkswagen brand.”

The company has already signed a partnership with Sanyo to supply Volkswagen with batteries but, once again, details on the model to be powered by them are yet to be released.

“At the moment we are heading down two routes – continued development of fuel efficient, high performance petrol engines, like our TSI range but side-by-side with this, we are heavily developing electric powertrains. We see hybrids as a stepping stone, not a solution.”