Volkswagen unveiled Thursday a hybrid-drive car that can be charged up through an electrical power socket, according to dpa. The test system, code-named TwinDrive and installed in a regular Volkswagen Golf compact car, is to be tried out till 2012, Volkswagen chief executive Martin Winterkorn said in the German capital Berlin. After years of insisting that diesel engines were the answer, German car companies have rushed in recent months to develop hybrid cars, which have both electric motors and internal-combustion engines. Four weeks ago, Volkswagen linked with Sanyo of Japan to jointly develop lithium ion batteries to store the electrical charge. Unlike the Toyota Prius, which generates all its electricity on board using a petrol engine, the Volkswagen TwinDrive can also top up its battery while parked, using the public electricity grid. Volkswagen said it would only use power generated from renewable sources such as sunshine, wind and hydro dams. The company is to build 20 of the test cars, which are planned to have an electric-only range of 50 kilometres before the internal-combustion engine must be started up.
