#VW Teases "Revolutionary" Electric Vehicle By 2020 [Auto Styling News]

At next month's Paris Motor Show, Volkswagen - seeking to turn the page on its scandalous gaming of emissions standards - will urge us to "Think New." And the concept car it recently teased ahead of the show is actually something pretty good, if may live up to the hype, if it makes it off the drawing board.

Volkswagen says the concept electric vehicle it will launch by 2020 will be based on it's "modular electric toolkit" (MEB in German) the basis of battery-electric vehicles with ranges of  249 to 373 miles. Several vehicles up and down the product line will apparently benefit from this new technology, including a beefed up electric car with greater range before 2020 (the current one gets a mere 83 miles out of a full charge.) By 2025, VW hopes to be selling between 2 million and 3 million electric vehicles every year.

This one-of-a-kind concept car, says VW, signals the brand’s entry into a new era, as revolutionary, it claims, "as the Beetle was seven decades ago, before it evolved into the world’s best-selling car of the last century." This car, too, they claim, "has the potential to make history with its completely new vehicle concept."

All well and good. The car, which we have only seen teased in the photos here, sure looks nice. The headlamps and tail lamps alone look revolutionary. And even if it had a regular gasoline engine in it, it looks like a winner (assuming, of course, consumers forgive them by 2020 for lying about earlier models' emissions!) But a note of caution here: VW, not unlike GM, Toyota and many other brands, have a history of teasing big changes and gorgeous concepts, only to have bean-counters ratchet down the beauty in the production phase.

One hopes they not only ARE able to deliver on these astounding range figures, but that the vehicles continue to evolve into something beautiful, like these indicate they will most certainly will be.