New Passat TDI confirmed for U.S.

IndigoBlueWagon said:

The Passat is nice, but for folks who want AWD and a wagon, this is what we really need.

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You Tease

IndigoBlueWagon said:

The Passat is nice, but for folks who want AWD and a wagon, this is what we really need.

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article said:

The company stuffed an extremely durable speaker into the exhaust system that allows it to alter the engine note.

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Manipulating exhaust notes is pretty common these days. I think it's ridiculous, but that's not a car I'd ever buy anyway. Too big, too complex, too expensive. I don't like automatic transmissions and I don't see any need for AWD.

Well Said

IndigoBlueWagon said:

Manipulating exhaust notes is pretty common these days.
I think it's ridiculous, but that's not a car I'd ever buy anyway.
Too big, too complex, too expensive.
I don't like automatic transmissions and I don't see any need for AWD.

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Amen!

Can buy two TDIs for the price of that over bloated barge. It doesn't get good mileage either.



D

That's what the A6 2.0 TDI is for

Still Far to Expensive

German_1er_diesel said:

That's what the A6 2.0 TDI is for

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So it get a little better F E than the 3.0 V6.

But I will bet it still is very expensive, like $50K.

No Audis are reasonably priced. Just look at a comparison between an A3 and a JSW.



D

...yea, but an A6 3.0 TDI 245hp is priced a few hundred € lower than the 3.0T gasser.

The 2.0 TDI costs 25.4% less than the 3.0T in Europe - so it would be more like $37,300. The 3.0T gasser is the most expensive engine for the A6 in Europe, the 2.0 TDI the least expensive.

Keep in mind that the A6 is a fairly big luxury car. OF COURSE it's going to be expensive.

Also, IMO, VWs being cheapened is a good thing - we're getting back to VW making people's cars, and leaving luxury cars to Audi.

Sorry for the lousy picture, but our local dealer dropped this off at our offices today.

We have it for the weekend. I haven't driven it yet, but reports is it's surprisingly powerful, quiet except for some strange noises from the Hankook tires, the DSG behaves, well, like a DSG, and the A/C is awesome. It's a SEL, sticker is 33K or so. And boy does it get warm under the hood.

So they saved a few bucks on the tires...great

IndigoBlueWagon said:

Manipulating exhaust notes is pretty common these days. I think it's ridiculous, but that's not a car I'd ever buy anyway. Too big, too complex, too expensive. I don't like automatic transmissions and I don't see any need for AWD.

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I disagree. Though it is a gasser, my Passat sounds sweet and I love the AWD. Yes I do well w/FWD AWD is better

A Usual VW Trick Cutting Quality

abctdi said:

So they saved a few bucks on the tires . . . great.

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VW did that to me on my 2010 JSW (Build Date 01-22-10) by putting
the least expensive worst rated Bridgestone EL-400-02s on my car.

TireRack had them as second from the bottom when the car was new,
and now they are at the bottom out of 26 tires in that category.
The earlier JSWs came with proper Michelins, so what is happening to VW?

Are the bean-counters calling all the shots now? Is it all about the bottom line?



D

abctdi said:

So they saved a few bucks on the tires...great

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The 17" wheels may not use Hankooks. The 17s were certainly quieter on the demo I tested.

IndigoBlueWagon said:

And boy does it get warm under the hood.

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I had the feeling that my car did a number of regens after I bought the car new. I wonder if the ECU 'conditions' the DPF by running regens more frequently during the first few hundred miles.

One day last winter I started my car cold, and only drove a couple of miles when I noticed that....hokey smokes!....the temp gage was pegged at 190 already! It just happened to be doing a regen just after starting it. The regen kicks out a lot of heat, hence the need for the cooling fans to stay on occasionally when you park it during or soon after a regen. I've also noticed the mileage being crappy for a short time when these regens are going on.

I got to bring the Passat home tonight. After dinner I took it for a drive down to the Cape Cod Canal and back, about 60 miles round trip. Some highway, a favorite twisty road near the canal, a couple of rotaries, some off-ramps that I drove on quickly enough to invoke the ESP (much to my surprise). And I drove on back roads to and from my house.

When I drove home from work I thought the ride was a bit harsh, so I checked tire pressures and they were all over 40 PSI except one. I aired them down to 36. The door panel says 33 PSI but they weren't completely cool so I thought that was a good compromise. It helped a lot.

I am very impressed with this car. I have absolutely no complaints about the DSG: it works so well in this application it makes me wonder if some of the issues folks with A3s and Sportwagens have really are engine tuning and not the transmission, and if using urea on the Passat makes it drive better overall. The shifts are lightening fast, it's in the right gear most of the time, shifts up and down are smooth, no hesitation from stop, and in Sport mode it hangs on to 5th even at 60 MPH so you don't have to wait for a downshift. I'm still not an automatic transmission guy, but it really seems to suit this car.

Power is much better than I expected. There's some intake noise on acceleration, but it's not loud by any means. The car is quiet on the highway except for some wind noise around the a-pillars and mirrors, and tire noise depending on the road surface. It reminds me of my A5 in that there's more wind and tire noise than the A4, but I also have to wonder if it's more noticeable because the car is quieter.

The ride is good, maybe even excellent. Properly inflated the 18s were fine on expansion joints and broken pavement, although the 17s might ride better. And the shocks have the typical VW combination of feeling firm, but getting a bit weak in the knees on dips or hard turns. It's no sports car, but you can get the rear to rotate a bit by lifting in a hard turn (if the ESP lets you). Is there a switch to shut that off?

The seats are really comfortable, visibility is pretty good although it has the same high beltline issues that so many cars have these days (especially when trying to back up). Finish inside is nice alhtough I agree with others here that the analog clock looks kind of cheesy. Also, there are two other clocks (one in the MFA and one in the Nav/stereo display. How many do I need? The Fender stereo sounds good, seems to have plenty of power, although I'm not a stereo person. The Nav display does pick up reflections (the moon tonight) when it's off, which was a bit distracting. Also a bit distracting is the footwell lights that stayed on. I'm sure there's a way to turn them off with the MFA or VAG-COM. The Climate control seems excellent: I would hope it's easy to make the defrost work well, which seems to often be a shortcoming in climatronic systems.

I took a couple of pictures of the Passat beside my 300D for comparison, as they are similarly sized cars built for the same purpose, just 27 years apart (the W124 was introduced in '85, although mine is a '93).

Rear view:

Front:

And the rear seat of the M-B, which VW claimed was smaller than the B4 Passat's rear seat back in '96:

And the Passat:

The Passat has significantly more leg room than the M-B, although you gotta admit that 18 year-old M-B Tex still looks good.

I was prepared to find this car sluggish, somewhat ponderous, and feeling like it was built to a price. It's none of those things. It's deceptively quick, handles great and has a firm but compliant ride, and the controls and surfaces feel really nice. I've looked at the 3-series diesel and a couple of Audis lately and although the Passat might not be quite up to those standards, it's close. And if the SE looks as good inside as the SEL, it's a great value. I guess that's what VW was trying to achieve.

Man that thing looks good fully decked out in black...

Does the new Passat have the fifth "injector" and regen cycles in addition to the ad blue or does the ad blue replace the need for regeneration cycles? The reviews of the engine talk about the ad blue, but I've found nothing about whether it still has the regen cycles like the Jetta. Thanks.

Since adblue does not do anything about particulates, I'm pretty sure it still needs to regenerate.

I would imagine that as long as diesels emit soot, we'll have particulate filters and regens. Besides, if they start putting particulate filters on gassers, they're never going away.

However, none of the TDIs sold here use an extra injector for DPF regen (yes, I know about the 1996 1Z, that's not for DPF regen) - the DPF-equipped cars here all use in-cylinder post-injection.

But, yes, the Passat still has a DPF, and still has to regen that. It does not have the NOx trap, because the urea does that job, and it does not have the H2S trap, because that's only there due to the output of the NOx trap, so those two regen cycles are eliminated.

The NOx trap (LNT) is replaced with an SCR catalyst which uses urea as the reductant instead of hydrocarbons (from excess fuel) in the case of the LNT.

El Dobro said:

I would imagine that as long as diesels emit soot, we'll have particulate filters and regens. Besides, if they start putting particulate filters on gassers, they're never going away.

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You're probably correct, but apparently there's a move among heavy-duty diesel engine manufacturers to eliminate the need for active regeneration (i.e., all regeneration is passive - see http://www.nhtsa.gov/staticfiles/rulemaking/pdf/cafe/Truck_CAFE-GHG_RIA.pdf , page 2-35). The major advantage of course is that no excess fuel would be required for regeneration. Biodiesel engine oil dilution would presumably also become a non-issue.

Whether this can be scaled to light-duty diesel, I'm not sure; I'll defer to the engineers on this site.

wxman said:

You're probably correct, but apparently there's a move among heavy-duty diesel engine manufacturers to eliminate the need for active regeneration (i.e., all regeneration is passive - see http://www.nhtsa.gov/staticfiles/rulemaking/pdf/cafe/Truck_CAFE-GHG_RIA.pdf , page 2-35). The major advantage of course is that no excess fuel would be required for regeneration. Biodiesel engine oil dilution would presumably also become a non-issue.

Whether this can be scaled to light-duty diesel, I'm not sure; I'll defer to the engineers on this site.

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Most of the European manufacturers are using Eolys fluid dispensed into the fuel to lower the amount of active regens. I wonder if that'll ever catch on here.

Handed the car off to Corey this morning. He said I drove 87 miles, 38.4 MPG. I have no idea how accurate that was, but if it is that's pretty good on a brand new car that I did not drive for economy.

El Dobro said:

Most of the European manufacturers are using Eolys fluid dispensed into the fuel to lower the amount of active regens. I wonder if that'll ever catch on here.

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Peugeot used it in it's very first DPF-equipped Diesels over a decade ago. Don't know what's the deal with these legacy cars but nobody else is using it.

TDIMeister said:

Peugeot used it in it's very first DPF-equipped Diesels over a decade ago. Don't know what's the deal with these legacy cars but nobody else is using it.

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I remember Pewgeot Diesels well!

Somewhat more contemporary than the 504/505 generation you might remember stateside...

IndigoBlueWagon said:

Handed the car off to Corey this morning. He said I drove 87 miles, 38.4 MPG. I have no idea how accurate that was, but if it is that's pretty good on a brand new car that I did not drive for economy.

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I've found my MFI to be within 5% every single fill up.

I drove a new Ford Focus five door as a rental this weekend. The display said I was getting 28.3 mpg. Ran 98 miles and put 4 gallons of gas into it. I know that there is no way to determine if I filled it as full as the last person that drove it, but that equates to over 3 mpg difference. And it was a dog!

TDIMeister said:

Peugeot used it in it's very first DPF-equipped Diesels over a decade ago. Don't know what's the deal with these legacy cars but nobody else is using it.

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Did some searching and found that Ford, Fiat, Volvo, Citroen and Skoda use it. There's even a VW part number for it. I also found that Cummins sells it under the name Platinum Plus.