Whenever the Wolfsburg Leviathan sets out to get something done, it is like having a go at moving the Moon – it takes a lot of preparation and it’s hard to get things going, but once it’s underway, there’s little one can do to stop it, and the desired result is almost always achieved.

We therefor thoroughly believe them when they say that they will reduce the average combined emissions figure for their entire European range down to 95 g/km of CO2, by the year 2020.

The information is from a recently published sustainability report, which is 168 pages long – apparently German thoroughness still exists. The topics brought up are climate preservation, environmental and social sustainability and economic progress, as “Volkswagen has set itself ambitious climate protection targets and is making massive investments in more efficient vehicles, production and technologies,” according to the press release which was made available along with the report – click here to see it in full.

Still, the main idea remains the reduction in CO2 emissions, and if VW does this whole “holistic life-cycle assessments” thing thoroughly and to the letter, employing the use of their top specialists, then the average CO2 rating for their range of Euro cars will go down from the current 134 g/km (2012 figure), to the desired 95 g/km.

According to VW, the figure has been seeing a downward trend for a while now, and they managed to shave a full 30 g/km from 2007 to 2012 – now re-read the first part of the first paragraph.

By Andrei Nedelea

Note: New VW XL1 pictured in gallery

PHOTO GALLERY

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