The "1 liter" car

(concept XL1)

If time is money then this may be one expensive car. Ten years ago Volkswagen built a concept “1 liter” car that could supposedly travel 100 km (62 miles) using just one liter of fuel. But with a 0-50 mph time of 32 seconds VW realized that people would age ten years and inflation would occur before the car actually got people anywhere. So VW decided the car was impractical and said they would never produce it. Well last year they came out with a similar concept called the XL1. Fitted with a 2 cylinder diesel engine, a lithium ion battery pack and a dual-clutch seven speed tranny the XL1 accomplished an incredible 235 mpg. It also reported a 0-62 mph time of 11.9 seconds which is a colossal improvement from the 32 second 0-50 time of its predecessor. Now according to one of Autoblog’s spy shooters Volkswagen is actually working on a production model of the XL1. Don’t get your undies in a bunch just yet though. The spy for autoblog also reported that this new XL1 is back to a crawl with yet another 32 second 0-50 mph time. So by the time you reach the end of the freeway onramp you'll be traveling at approximately 23 mph. Sounds like a lot of honks and middle fingers will be in store for whoever drives this car. Who knows if that’s really accurate or not, but if it is would you be willing to triple the amount of time it takes you to get anywhere just to save a little fuel? To me time is money and I’d personally rather ride my bicycle which is probably faster and gets unlimited miles per gallon than drive a car that slow. We can only hope that if Volkswagen really does come out with a production XL1 it's speed will be closer to that of the concept than that of the original. Only time will tell.