Autoblog claims to have an inside scoop on some electric car development by VW and Audi. They call it “Inside Volkswagen’s electronic toy store”
Even more exciting than VW’s work with EVs is the research that it’s doing with autonomous cars, that is, driverless cars. After taking second place in DARPA’s Urban Challenge in 2007, the Stanford-VW team came up with the idea of racing an Audi TT up Pike’s Peak this year. Audi has kept the results of this effort hush-hush, but is going to make a public announcement any day now. Interestingly, the cost of the electronics in the DARPA car was around $250,000. But for the Pike’s Peak run the cost was slashed to somewhere between $25,000 and $50,000. That’s a rate of improvement that smashes through Moore’s Law!
I’m going to guess it was at the high end of that rather large price range but they must have picked the low end for a reason. Maybe it’s $25K without the automation? The automation angle is really cool, but I still would like to see a hybrid-diesel as it seems to have the most appropriate power-range metrics for American roads.
