Visiting the Volkswagen Autostadt – the “Car Tower Tour” is a must do
Since the first automaker that we decided to visit was Volkswagen, we landed in Hannover and booked an Airbnb in Meinersen. After seeing the car collection of our Airbnb host on the first day, we were ready to see more.
From our accommodation, Autostadt was only a 40-minute drive away. Parking costs us €6.00, the entrance ticket was €15.00, and the Car Tower Tour costs €8.00.
The first place we went to was the visitor centre to get our tickets. Here we were greeted by an array of Golfs from the MK1 to the MK8. I’ve only ever driven the Golf GTi MK7 for like 3 minutes at Malaysia Autoshow 2018, and I quite liked it.
Unfortunately, there will be no E Golf version on the MK8. You would have to get the ID3 if you want an electric mid-sized hatchback by Volkswagen. Before we go on, I’ll just point out that “Autostadt” just translates to Automobile City.
Volkswagen’s ID3:
Volkswagen’s car tower is something unique. Whether or not it really helps in terms of logistics is a different topic. What it does effectively though is get people interested and talking about it.
The cars at the tower are ready for pick-up by the owners. This means they don’t stay for longer than 24 hours inside the tower. Each tower is capable of storing 400 cars.
There are no human workers in this area. Brands of cars that are stored in the car tower include Volkswagen (obviously), Seat (a Spanish brand owned by VW), and Cupra (a sub-brand of Seat).
When you take the car tower tour, they will take you for a ride in one of the car boxes so you could get good view of the entire operation. The cars are all parked and are moved around with the help of sliding tracks.
From the top of the tower, you get a view of the Autostadt. What I found interesting was that Volkswagen has its own bank/financial service and its own power-plant.
You could see the power-plant chimneys a mile away and we got a good view of it from the top of the car tower.
Volkswagen’s powerplant not only supplies energy to its own facility but also everything in a 20km radius. It used too be solely a coal power-plant, but now they are moving to an all-gas operation.
The Zeithaus Museum
After the car tower tour, we headed to the Zeithaus Museum which is a general exhibition for cars which is not just focused on Volkswagen’s products. There is a lot to see in the Museum. Since I do work with diesel engines, I found the XL1 to be interesting.
The XL1 is powered by a 0.8L 2-cylinder common-rail turbo diesel engine which boasted 111km/l of fuel economy.
Currently there seems to be less interest in diesel powered passenger cars in general, which personally, I find to be quite disappointing since the usage of diesel allows the use of vegetable oils (to make biodiesel).
Also on display at the Zeithaus was a VW Golf GTi with a W12 engine by Bentlley. Of course, this never went into production. The concept was made in 8 weeks for the 2007 GTi Festival in Wörthersee. The W12 from Bentley displaces the rear seats of the Golf.
It was only at Volkswagen that we didn’t see much of the company’s history in comparison to other car makers (Mercedes showed the ‘grandfather’ clock engine, Porsche displayed its first electric car, and BMW showed its various motorcycles and aeroplane engines).
I guess I know why. The Zeithaus museum is full of a variety of cars from various manufacturers (some that don’t even exist anymore).
Other displays at the Zeithaus include (clockwise from top left) an Alvis FWD Type FA (FWD from 1928), a Lamborghini 350 GT, old magazines, and Ferdinand Porsche’s early design of the Volkswagen Beetle.
The exhibit start from the top and you walk down the stairs to see different types of displays at different levels. The museum also featured some American cars but no Japanese cars were around.
Driving an e-Golf
After lunch, we tried Volkswagen’s “Electric Cars Test Drive” which was free of charge. The ladies headed to the factory outlet nearby while we had a go in the electric version of the MK7 Golf.
The e-Golf is available in a very standard trim which helps make the price much more attractive. I have tried the BMW i3, Renault Zoe, and Nissan Leaf previously and I ended up liking the e-Golf the most.
Why?
Well, the E-Golf looks the most standard out of the bunch. I don’t like standing out on the road and the BMW i3 does the worst job at being subtle. The i3 also has a weird tyre size (155/70 R19 in front 175/60 R19 at the back).
The Renault Zoe is based on a very old chassis and I didn’t like the bright coloured interior on the one I tried previously. I’ll put the Nissan Leaf in second place because it can look subtle in certain colours and trims, but I don’t like the Leaf’s one-pedal driving mode.
The e-Golf was just right and the insides felt more comfortable than the Leaf.
My personal ranking for small electric cars:
- Volkswagen e-Golf
- Nissan Leaf
- BMW i3 (jump to end of article)
- Renault Zoe
Near the MobiDeck were several mobile charging stations by Volkswagen. One mobile charging station is capable of charging up to 8 cars at once and has a maximum charging output of 150kW.
This charger was hooked up straight to the power supply but in case you want to deploy these for a festival, you’ll have to charge its batteries before using it to charge electric vehicles.
Visiting Pavilions Of Automakers Under The VW Group
Just in case you don’t know yet, there are a number of brands under the VW group including Bugatti, Porsche, Audi, Skoda, Lamborghini, and Seat. Each automaker has a Pavilion in the Autostadt.
You can visit all these pavilions at the Autostadt in a day, so we walked around the Autostadt to see everything we possibly could.
The Premium Clubhouse is where you can find a chromed-out Bugatti Veyron and its engine on display. The Veyron was, at one moment, the production car with the highest top speed in the world.
In Audi’s Pavilion were an RS6, an RS7, the A1, and the E-Tron S5 Quattro. I’ve never really been a fan of Audis but the RS6 is very appealing. I also got chopped by an RS4 on a wet and rainy B-road at night which kind of makes me want an Audi even more.
Seeing an Audi RS6 in the flesh for the first time was amazing too. We’ll talk about Audi more in another part of this series.
The Porsche Pavilion had a very classy display inside its very weird tongue-like building. Although made in Germany, Porsches are actually quite a rare sight, making them very exclusive cars.
The most Porsches I’ve ever seen in one place (besides the factory) was at a Porsche Day at Sepang Circuit. We’ll also be talking about Porsche in detail when we visit Porsche Museum in a later part of this series.
Mid-engined Porsche of today
The Porsche Taycan Turbo has no turbocharger
I believe the Skoda (Czech Republic) and Seat (Spain) models share the same chassis with most Volkswagen cars. The Skoda Karoq kind of looks like a Tiguan. The same goes for the cars by Seat.
They all look like they share a same chassis, but that makes sense for a big production like Volkswagen.
Skoda Kamiq (top) and Skoda Karoq (bottom)
Under Seat is the ‘Cupra’ Brand much like Citroen has the ‘DS’ brand.
Lamborghini’s pavilion featured an Aventador hanging on a wall and Volkswagen’s Pavilion was cordoned off for a private event but we did at least get to see the 2020 Golf in its ‘Style’ variant.
We then walked to the Volkswagen Customer center to see some new cars that were for sale.
Volkswagen Golf Style. Not to be confused with Perodua Axia Style
I wouldn’t mind an estate Passat
Volkswagen’s ‘Up!’ Is Available With 1.0 L Engine And A 5-Speed Manual Transmission. Almost Sounds Like An Axia.
Verdict
The Autostadt is huge and takes a lot of time to cover. We didn’t take the factory tour unfortunately. We would have needed another day just to do that since the Pavillions are actually interesting (especially to a foreigner like myself).
However, the visit was still satisfying since I can now say I have driven an electric car in Germany.
For Muslims, there is no prayer room at the Autostadt. We were lucky a friendly staff member helped arrange an empty meeting room for us to pray while we were there.
If you’re going with ladies, they can always walk over to the nearby factory outlet store (Wolfsburg Factory Outlet) in case they get bored and you still wish to stay at the Museum/Pavillion.
At the Zeithaus museum, you are allowed to carry a back pack, which made it convenient since I like to carry my camera in a back pack. The least interesting Pavillion would be the Lamborghini pavillion.
More parts of this series:
- Part 1: Driving 2,177km In A Mercedes Vito Tourer
- Part 2: Autostadt And Driving A Volkswagen E-Golf
- Part 3: Automotive History At The Mercedes-Benz Museum
- Part 4: Racing Heritage At The Porsche Museum
- Part 5: Entering A Tesla Showroom For The First Time
- Part 6: Audi Forum Ingolstadt
- Part 7: The Weird & Wonderful At The Munich Transport Museum
- Part 8: BMW Museum
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