Volkswagen Charges Up New Passat GTE for the Trip to Paris

GTO for Ferraris (or Pontiacs), GT-R for Nissan supercars, GTA for high-performance Alfa Romeos (or car-theft video games, or metropolitan Toronto)... The list goes on and on, but few are as familiar with the idea as Volkswagen, which uses the letters GTI for hot hatches, GTD for their diesel counterparts, and most recently, GTE for plug-in hybrids.

VW introduced the nomenclature with the Golf GTE earlier this year, and is now following up with the Passat GTE you see here. It packs a hybrid powertrain consisting of a 1.4-liter turbo four producing 154 horsepower and an electric motor good for another 114 hp, channeled to the front wheels through a six-speed DSG for a combined output of 215 hp and 295 pound-feet of torque.

That's more juice than the Golf GTE, but in the larger Passat delivers similar performance: 0-100 in under eight seconds and a top speed in excess of 218 km/h. In electric-only mode, it'll reach 129 km/h and take you as far as 50 km. But with both motors running, and both the 13-gallon fuel tank and the lithium-ion battery topped off, it'll travel up to 1,000 kilometers. That's the equivalent of 622 miles - more than the Golf GTE and more than enough to send the plug-in Passat from London to its debut in Paris and back again (or all the way from Detroit to New York) all without stopping at a single charging or gas station along the way.