Ain't No Mountain High Enough

- Richard Gooding

The repercussions of Volkswagen’s diesel testing scandal are still being felt almost three years after news of ‘Dieselgate’ broke, but with the company enjoying the same levels of uninterrupted sales recorded before the wrongdoing, little seems to have changed in car buyers’ minds. One positive side effect is the acceleration of VW’s electric and electrified vehicle programme and the re-launch of the battery-electric e-up! and e-Golf, bolstering the plug-in hybrid Golf & Passat GTE.

With four members of its new all-electric I.D. family unveiled since autumn 2016, the German company is firmly set on achieving its ambition to produce over three million electric cars per year by 2025, when it plans to offer more than 23 all-electric models. Work is already progressing on the I.D. hatchback, with a production reveal slated for 2019.

Public perception-changing peak

What initially seemed an almost impossible mountain to climb, Volkswagen has successfully harnessed itself onto a public perception-changing peak. And how else to further its electric ambitions and prove its all-electric technology works by taking on one of the most fearsome motorsport challenges? The Pikes Peak International Hill Climb – otherwise known as the ‘Race to the Clouds’ – has seen man and machine try to scale its 156 corners and 12.2 miles in record time since 1916. It has been motorsport nectar to a broad range of legendary driving luminaries: Walter Röhrl, Stig Blomqvist, Michele Mouton, Sébastien Loeb, Nobuhiro Tajima and Rod Millen are just a handful of names who’ve scaled the dizzying heights of the Colorado mountain’s 1,440-metre ascent.