A New Era for Hybrid Drivetrains
Volkswagen and drive specialist Schaeffler have jointly announced a new series hybrid system, unveiled at the Vienna Motor Symposium, that will enter series production at Volkswagen this year. The move comes as battery electric vehicles account for around 20 percent of new registrations, while the majority of vehicles sold remain combustion-powered or electrified through conventional hybrid systems. The series hybrid, long a niche technology in Germany, is now being positioned by VW and Schaeffler as a mainstream option bridging combustion and full electrification.
Series hybrid technology is well established outside the passenger car sector, most notably as the diesel-electric drive format used in heavy locomotives and mining trucks, where a combustion engine generates electricity via a generator while propulsion itself is purely electric. Applied to passenger cars, this approach allows a small combustion engine to deliver long range and high power density from liquid fuel, while still meeting demanding power requirements such as highway driving or towing.
How the Multi-Mode Transmission Works
Unlike conventional series hybrids, which forgo a mechanical drive connection entirely and rely on a range extender, Volkswagen and Schaeffler have developed a multi-mode transmission that combines the generator, electric motor, and final drive within a single housing. Critically, the system retains a mechanical drive path from the combustion engine to the wheels through the use of a clutch and a carefully engineered interconnection of components — a feature the companies describe as entirely new. This addresses a shortcoming of earlier series hybrids from Honda and Nissan, whose gasoline-electric drives lost efficiency and power at higher speeds because all propulsion had to route through the generator.
The vehicle can operate in three modes depending on driving conditions. In purely electric mode, used at low speeds, only the electric motor drives the vehicle from the buffer battery while the combustion engine is switched off. In series drive mode, the combustion engine runs mechanically decoupled and generates electricity for the electric motor within its optimal operating range, extending electric range. From roughly 60 km/h on country roads and highways, the system shifts to parallel drive, in which the combustion engine becomes the primary drive source, the clutch engages the mechanical connection to avoid generator losses, and the electric motor can assist as a booster during acceleration.
Market Rollout Plans
The multi-mode transmission is paired with the Volkswagen Group's 1.5 TSI evo2 engine, offered in 95 kW or 110 kW variants with 220 Nm or 250 Nm of torque respectively. In Europe, the system will launch as a full hybrid with a small 1.6 kWh buffer battery, while a plug-in hybrid variant with a larger battery is planned for the Chinese market. In Europe, the hybrid will debut in the Golf and T-Roc, available to order from the fourth quarter of 2026, badged "Hybrid" and positioned between the existing eTSI mild hybrid and the Golf GTE/eHybrid plug-in hybrid variants.
