Inside Volkswagen's electronic toy store

Sent to you via Google Reader

Inside Volkswagen's electronic toy store

Filed under: Technology, Volkswagen, Autoline on Autoblog

Autoline on Autoblog with John McElroy



Nestled on the fringe of Stanford University's campus in Palo Alto, California is one of the coolest toy stores in the automotive industry. Officially it's called Volkswagen's Electronics Research Lab, and inside they're working on some of the most innovative technology that we'll soon see in cars.



Volkswagen is using the ERL to develop electric cars, autonomous cars, online navigation, new human-machine interfaces and other electronics related technology. The reason the lab is in Silicon Valley is that VW wanted to tap into the "let's-just-get-it-done" entrepreneurial spirit for which the region is famous. And it's attracted some pretty interesting talent to work there.



For example, Martin Eberhard, the guy who created Tesla and who later had a major fallout with Elon Musk (who now owns Tesla), is now working on electric cars for VW. And yes, he's still working with laptop-type batteries, which are officially known as the 18650. Eberhard claims he's going to be able to come out with an electric version of the Golf with a 200-mile driving range, and an Audi e-tron with a 300-mile range.

Sent from my iPad