Gadgetory

so what do you want in your next car space fuel economy performance if the answer is yes VW would like to think this is motorised mammoth let's see if it has a prayer of delivering on all those fronts as we check out the 2011 VW Touareg hybrid and check the tech the Touareg is Volkswagens Cayenne with one big difference the Cayenne is Porsches best selling product the Touareg VW's worst they share a hybrid powerplant and transmission as well as frame shell and doors beyond that the two diverge a lot don't tell your friends you bought a Cayenne that just costs less they'll think you're a tool let's talk about interface in this Touareg Hybrid you've got two good places which I couldn't say about a VW until just about today first of all here's your main screen is a whole new rig for VW if you haven't been in one lately anywhere from the navigation map which looks really good nicely rendered good dot pitch you got your 3d a little bit of topo going on there 2d as well you can look at traffic as a contextual list or you can have it display of a map of course and as I bounce through things like climate settings and other screens you can see you've got a nice big touchscreen big buttons very forward like in that sense from earlier forward systems but it's got a partner screen also which is really kind of in the class of some of the BMW and Mercedes Helper screens in there between the gauges kind of a wall-to-wall LCD and it gives you all kinds of other information you can plug into by using this rocker on the wheel and that'll get you from navigation audio telephone or vehicle now what you drive with in there as I showed you is navigation of course and you've got this sort of menu bar instead of lots of busy buttons around here so again these are dynamic here's where you would change your map orientation I like how it focuses things to little small buckets of function as opposed to getting me Hugh nested submenus and you've got some other relevant stuff this isn't about destination but it pulls up the bluetooth streaming media screen or whatever is your media right now to kind of have that all in one place because they're realizing you're going to have the destination up and want to keep it up while other stuff takes place now let's move on to our media choices here I like how when you go to media you just get what you're playing now and then if you want to dive into sources you open that up to expand that's kind of the right way to orient my top of mind awareness of what I'm doing you have a built-in hard drive in this car you've also got bluetooth streaming media I've got my phone hooked up now the bluetooth streaming is pretty slick you've got full readout of metadata as well as transport control now here's where we get into some fun SD card internal CD I guess you can option an external changer on this guy where would they hide that aha over to the glovebox what is this pull the yellow tab it's kind of like when you're on a jetliner heading down into the ocean and down slowly drops this little deal here very double-oh-seven ish here's where you've got your single optical disc player and two SD card slots but both those media are outdated I'd gut this thing keep a Glock in there was an extra clip oh by the way I see that connector down there that's one of those multimedia interface deals be them you didn't see fit to give us any of the proprietary cables that go with it but you can use that to create a USB female pigtail an aux female an iPod connector etc and those would pop up on the source the review camera has as you can see trajectory and distance plus you can decide to option in or out this overlay screen of what the distance sensors are showing you so that's kind of a nice rich interface for deep bumping into stuff you've also got this mode over here on the right this ribbon that lets you decide on sensors and sensor overlays and some camera positions it's almost more than you're ever going to want to screw with but it's a nice toy you have one choice of transmission on this guy it's an 8-speed automatic it's technically a Tiptronic from the Porsche Audi vwfamily you move it to drive or kick it over here to tip it into different gears you've also got a sport mode back here which we'll check out when we get on the road and right next to that you've got your --mode for extremely economical running it biases the car more toward efficiency then even drive and of course even more than sport here's your all wheel drive control for motion is very simply implemented on this car you're either on road or you're off-road the Touareg has a very cool headlight technology developed by hella a forward scanning camera constantly evaluates oncoming headlights and reshapes the beam cut off of your tour eggs headlights in real time to give you maximum lighting without blinding them I think it's the only car in the world to do that very cool we've got a three litre v6 not necessarily just direct injection because you'd see TDI here we have TSI so direct injection combines with super charging here's a supercharger here here's the nose pulley here's your intake plenum so this is a very different thing than you're used to on any hybrid except this and the Cayenne which has the same motor it's an Audi motor by the way you can tell by all these various fittings those valve covers are a dead giveaway oh yes so is the Audi logo on front of the cam here this guy will get you a 380 horsepower 425 foot-pounds of torque lots of torque because superchargers are torquey electric motors are torquey this guy of course has one sandwiched between the engine and the transmission 0 to 60 is 6.2 seconds for a vehicle that weighs 50 135 without you in it that's pretty impressive mpg not so much so 2024 but given the whole package how big it is and how fast it moves I guess that's something of a wins now driving this Touareg supercharged hybrid is interesting mixed bag of experiences you've got these two drive modes there's drive and there's Sport and you've got this --mode as I pointed out Jekyll and Hyde going on here this car can be the biggest slug you've ever driven if you poke along Indy and eco mode real disconnected real rubbery long delay it's like steering the Titanic you know gotta make a left turn give me five minutes well on this thing it's like got to accelerate to get in that hole up there give me five seconds that's a long time but once you get this guy in till it's a sport mode and or mixed agir yourself all those gobs of supercharged and electric torque come on and you can absolutely punch out of a hole now I didn't get this guy off road so I can't tell you much about how it does there but one last note about driving is visibility in this vehicle very interesting a square cornered mirror you don't see that very often looks at a very square back light to the rear which maximizes the amount of visible area and as I look over the corners this car actually has very little in the way of blind spots I mean they're they're like any modern cars thick pillars but they've done a really good job carving a lot of holes in this vehicle so it's better than most at staying visible and of course I love this panoramic roof this is one of the most panoramic of the panoramic roofs that are so much in vogue these days you really feel the airiness in this guy which it actually doesn't print that area from the outside but when you're inside it's very very nice light greenhouse now before you pull the trigger on a Touareg hybrid you got a pencil out the TDI version the turbo diesel check it out the hybrid gets 20 24 mpg the diesel 1928 the hybrid gets to 60 in 6.2 the diesel takes 7.9 the hybrid cost about 61 grand the diesel about 48,000 but you will have to spend a few thousand more to get things like the panoramic roof still you save many thousands and get the TDI's lovable torque curve and I'll bet the TDI doesn't feel half as much slower as the numbers suggest okay let's price this Touareg hybrid about 61 5 delivered and that's about it there are no tech options there are hardly any options except for light color then you got to compare it to the turbo diesel you owe that to yourself test driving both head-to-head the diesel costs a lot less it needs a few thousand more in it to get the equipment the same but you got to do the math on that one and the Genki powertrain here could be a deal-breaker no matter what