Living with the VW Golf GTE – what you need to know and VW don't tell you.

A few days ago I bought a VW Golf GTE. Four days later I was back at the dealers wanting my money back. Sound strange for such a classy piece of kit? Yes, and a crying shame - but there's a few things you need to know about the Golf GTE before you decide to share your life with one.

The VW Golf GTE is a beautiful car, it is a pleasure to drive and in electric mode it feels like a dream. But it’s not for everyone. Living with an electric car is very different to a conventional car, it does require some commitment and there are things you should know before you decide if it is right for you. It could well be that a conventional car like a GT TDI will be a better option and give you more convenient and economical motoring than a GTE ever can.

The Golf GTE comes with some pretty extravagant economy and performance claims. Like 166 mpg petrol consumption and 0-62 mpg in 7.6 seconds. Of course, nobody really expects to achieve that in real life, but something decent would be good and expectations have been set.

To get the benefits of the electric drive you will need to recharge your car regularly – probably more than once a day, if you do not have a convenient place to do this or you regularly drive on trips away from home then this may be a problem. If your battery runs flat you will be entirely into petrol mode and economy is not good: 40-45 mpg. If you attempt to recharge the battery from the engine while driving then expect around 25-30 mpg.

VW  quote a range of 30 miles in battery mode but this is hugely optimistic. If your trip includes typical 50-60 mph roads and a bit of town driving then expect more like 20 miles.

Recharging your car from a domestic socket will take around 3 – 3 ½ hours. From an AC car charging point it will be about 2 ¼ hours. The option to fast charge your car in 30 mins at a service station is not available on the GTE – when you are on a long run and you want to recharge while you have a pit-stop then this is a problem.

If you are away from home you will need up to date information e.g. SatNav POI about the whereabouts of suitable charging points and you will need to plan your journeys so that you can leave your car at a charging point for about 2 hrs each time you want to recharge. Otherwise once the battery runs down you will be entirely dependent on petrol power and as you'll discover, the GTE is not an economical car.

If your journey involves fast driving or motorway cruising then the car will be almost entirely in petrol mode and there will be almost no assistance from the electric drive. Under these conditions the GTE does not deliver great fuel economy. Again, you can expect around 40-45 mpg compared to 55-60 mpg for a GT TDI.

Looking back at them, most of the reviews of the Golf GTE that I'd seen were either written by journalists who'd never seen the car and just rehashed the press releases, or they'd taken one for a spin for a couple of hours, filed their article and skived off early. I covered 500 miles in four days so here's some real life fuel consumption figures you're likely to achieve:

•  General purpose driving with a mix of motorways, rural roads and town – hybrid mode with battery regularly recharged and often using battery mode (my average over 500 miles): 50 mpg
• Fast motorway cruising in hybrid mode: 40-45 mpg
• Short urban trips in hybrid mode (I didn't do much of this): 60+ mpg
• Driving in battery charge mode: 25 – 30 mpg

In electric mode expect to achieve around 3 miles/ kwh. The brochure suggests 5.4 miles/kwh (11.2 kwh per 100km). VW don't say if this is using the Combined Cycle test which has a particular emphasis on low speed driving but I can well believe that it was.

The Combined Cycle fuel consumption test used by car manufacturers was introduced in 2001 to give like for like comparisons between cars with conventional engines. The results that it gives for plug in hybrids are hugely unrepresentative. The standard test lasts for just under 20 minutes, covers 11km and is predominantly at low speeds to simulate urban driving. Under these conditions with the GTE in hybrid mode the petrol engine would rarely start but the battery would quickly run down. I would estimate that the Golf GTE's battery would last about an hour if the test cycle was continued, corresponding to a distance traveled of 33km.

Fig 1: Combined cycle test profile.

Source: http://www.dft.gov.uk/vca/fcb/the-fuel-consumption-testing-scheme.asp

So why are VW doing this and producing a car with such misleading fuel economy figures? Quite simply: politics. The manufacturers are required to reduce the average emissions of the vehicles they sell across their range. The emissions figures that the regulators use are the Combined Cycle figures, and for the reasons explained above the tests produce massively favourable figures for plug-in hybrid vehicles. Electric vehicles are expensive to build and you can charge more for a high end PHEV than you can for an electric shopping trolley. So it's a no-brainer. Easy win for the manufacturers but a massive bear trap for unsuspecting customers.

Now, let's face it, the basic spec of the GTE just doesn't cut it - some of the options are actually essentials. The functions to remotely manage the charging, heating and cooling of your car are only available with the optional Discovery Pro satnav. These might sound like gimmicks, but they’re not.

If you’re driving electric you won’t have a hot engine to warm and defrost your car, and if you switch on your aircon while you are in electric mode you’ll soon flatten your battery. You need to be able to perform both of these functions with the car plugged into an external power source.  Also, if you leave your car charging somewhere you need to be able to see the state of charge, if you need to go and unhook from a public charging point or if your car is ready for you to start a journey. Not having these functions will make living with your car far more difficult.

The batteries in the GTE are under the back seat and the petrol tank is where you would expect to find the spare wheel. This means that there is nowhere to store the jack and the charging cables so they end up floating around in your boot.

And that petrol tank is smaller than you'll find in the conventional Golf, so combined with the poor fuel economy you could be filling up a lot more often than you might have thought.

Performance in GTE mode is impressive. Acceleration is probably faster than that quoted by VW. Great if you're trying to get away from the police, but it would be tiring to drive in GTE mode for any length of time because the car is so ultra responsive. I don’t know how this affects fuel consumption because I didn’t try it for long enough. In electric mode the car is extremely quiet and pleasant to drive, performance is fine for general purpose driving but it gobbles up the battery far sooner than I ever expected.

So what next?

If you understand the potential issues living with a GTE it is without doubt a beautiful car to own and drive. But living with a plug in hybrid does require some commitment and you will need some of the additional cost options to make ownership a viable experience. Some of the standard tests that inform the brochure were intended for conventional engine cars and the results won’t remotely reflect real life experience with a GTE plug in hybrid. Depending on your driving habits you may well find that a conventional car is a better and more economical choice. On the other hand driving an electric car is a joy not to be missed.

So what happened when I got back to the dealer? Well, they were great. No, actually they were unbelievably fantastic. Lightcliffe VW of Stoke agreed to take the car back, return my Golf GT TDI and refund my hard earned cash.

The salesman nodded as he read my notes...

"This is a substitute for a GTI, not a diesel.... people who do 6 - 8,000 miles a year, commute across town and then like to have fun at the weekend... I've got customers like that. A Golf GTI does about 43 mpg anyway so that's OK."

Now I was starting to understand. The GTE is a serious mean machine, it just was never meant for people like me. It's a high class town runaround for cross-town commuters with eco-credentials who like a bit of a blast when they're let out of their cages. If you read between the lines in the brochure that's kind of what it says, it's just it's not obvious until it's pointed out.

"VW never told us this... yours is the first one we've sold.... this feedback is really useful... anyway why would you ever even build an electric car without a satnav - you need to know where to find the charging points."

They'd got the message.

"We've  taken a hit on this you understand - but we hope you'll remember us when you come to change your car."

Too right.... But it would have been uncool to show just how relieved I was feeling.

Forms were filled in and papers were signed. The salesman gave me back the keys to my beloved GT TDI. It had been cleaned and polished. Call of duty or what? If they were feeling the need to atone for past sins ('Tash, are you reading this?) they'd done proud.

I turned the key, it was like being reunited with an old lover. I packed my bags and headed south to visit my son. A fairly typical run for me, 77 miles, autocruise, [censored] mph, M6, M6Toll (Oh, b@11@x... I'd forgotten to put my TAG back in), M42, M40, off the motorway, into town, onto the drive, stop the engine, check the driving data. 66.6 mpg... The Beast is Back!

Spinning the law

There's quite a lot of people who might say that lawyers could do with some 360 degree feedback. It's been said - more than once - that they talk legal gobbledeguk just to confuse the rest of us and make us think that we need them. But as a friend of mine pointed out recently, people who get to the top invariably speak very clearly in simple language - the others just aren't going to make it. Perhaps it's time someone told them.

It's OK if it's a 301

"It's OK if it's a 301 but not if it's a 302" said my friend Matt then I asked him about optimising my 360 degree feedback site on a new URL. Now what he was actually addressing was a dilemma I'd been thinking about for some time. I recently managed to get hold of the domain feedback360.com for a few dollars when it expired. It was always a better domain than the main one I have been using for many years at www.appraisal360.co.uk - but as I didn't have it at the time I had to make do. So now I have a highly optimised site sitting on a domain that wasn't my first choice - so what to do? I'd like to optimise the new domain but I didn't want the effort to be wasted - or detract from the existing one which reliably delivers me 100 hits a day from Google. Apparently the 301 redirect is the answer. What this means is that if the URL changes when you land on it then it's OK. So try typing in www.feedback360.com and you should find that it redirects to www.appraisal360.co.uk - that's what's supposed to happen. Phew!

360 feedback blogs

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Just when I needed you most

Just in case you were worrying that this post was going to be about some silly love song ("Four hundred children and a crop in the field.") - it isn't. It's the latest in the saga of the Mighty Liverpool Victoria Insurance Company and the Dead Badger.

A piece of marketing junk arrived the other day from none other than the Mighty Liverpool Victoria Insurance Company: "Here when you need us most" - which was an interesting take on things when they had just taken 14 days, less a few hours to replace a couple of bits of broken plastic on the front of my car, and left me stranded without a car for five days.

Actually they didn't replace a couple of bits of broken plastic. In fact I'm not sure what they did, but it cost £1,700. And no - that's not a typo. What I do know is that they recharged the air conditioning because they thought it wasn't working (had the switch in the wrong position) - and charged that to the insurance company. And they left a small dent in the drivers side wing which I noticed when I got home. And they valetted the car - which was nice of them - and did something to the brakes.

What I'm trying to say is that being a vehicle repairer and charging insurance companies for unnecessary work seems to get you a mighty good living - no questions asked - which we all have to pay for. Contrast that with the £10 per day that the Mighty Liverpool Victoria Insurance company offer when your courtesy car isn't there just when you need it most..... Hmmm.

On yer bike...!

In the latest act of the Mighty Liverpool Victoria insurance company Bodyshop Connect Stafford and the Dead Badger saga I find myself the proud driver of a Chevrolet.

But this isn't the fire breathing, rubber burning, gas guzzling Muscle Machine of a Chevvy that we have come to know and love - more like a tupperware box on castors.

"You'll have to get used to the power." said the recovery driver when he dropped it off his car transporter. (The badgers are safe - it won't go fast enough to kill anything.) The same car transporter that he was expecting to use to collect my dead VW Golf - the one which was about 40ft long without a lift he was expecting to back onto my drive. I don't think so...!

So having left me with my Chevvy and departed without my car I awaited for the next call from the Mighty Liverpool Victoria "We can't organise a Pissup in a Brewery" Customer Service Team. Actually - I didn't wait because I figured it might be at least another three years before I heard anything. However, I did indeed get a call from Clare, their Chief Apologist "We can offer you compensation of £10 per day for the excessive time you have been without a replacement vehicle. To say nothing of the trillions of calls you made to the muppets on our helpdesk who can't even work out that you are making a complaint and just put you on hold then back into the queuing system for good measure."

Having pointed out that £40 would hardly cover a taxi fare these days and that maybe she had noticed that my renewal comes up in March she went away to talk to "Head Office".

I'm still holding my breath.....

Sticking it where the sun don't shine

Have you ever met someone from The Committee who grabs the rule book and promptly dissappears up their own backside with it? Yes? Thought so. It never ceases to amaze me how much brainpower can be applied to finding reasons for not doing perfectly sensible things rather than finding ways of making them happen.

Suffice to say, because of my 360 degree feedback services I find myself in a small group of freelance HR professionals who meet from time to time calling ourselves The SIG. Not surprisingly our attention was turned towards finding ways of promoting ourselves - and as a first step we now have a rudimentary website about our HR services.

So where does the rule book come in? Well - we are a part of the local branch of the CIPD and if The Committee is to be believed it is against our code of professional conduct to promote ourselves. Hmmmm.... Still trying to puzzle that one out.

Growling at the badger

When I saw the low form of a badger appear in the headlights late on Wednesday night little did I realise the extent to which the mighty Liverpool Victoria insurance company were about to start ruling my life. Badgers, I have now discovered, are substantially bigger and heavier than you might think, and the somewhat louder impact than I was expecting was followed shortly afterwards by a barrage of beeping and flashing lights from the car telling me that I needed to check the coolant level.

This did not sound good and rather suggested significant damage to the car. Fortunately I was only about a mile from home and managed to make it back. On inspection the next morning it turned out that one of the radiator hoses had been torn off by the impact and damaged. Other than that some expensive looking bits of plastic were mangled and I figured a call to the insurers was in order.

"They are the in things to hit at the moment." said the girl on the claims desk. "They're heavy things to hit." said the girls on the repair desk. "Is the badger alright?" said the next one I spoke to. "The badger's fine. It's in Badger Heaven - just my car is in bits."

That was on Thursday morning. As I write this late on Friday night my car is still in bits on the drive and I'm told I should have a replacement car on Monday - should. Of course, we should be able to live without cars. But when you live in the country and your children live seventy miles away it's easier said than done. The X64 bus will occassionally take you into sunny Stoke on Trent but there is no guarantee that it will bring you back again and that's about it.

So - dear Patrick and Philippa. I'm sitting here writing this in bed when I should be with you. I miss you both very much and one way and another, despite having friends like Liverpool Victoria somehow or other I will get to see you this week. Dad.