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Partnerships

Preserving a piece of civil rights history: The Jenkins’ Bus

Most vehicles that sit outside unattended for four decades aren’t destined to ever move again. But this 1966 Volkswagen Type 2 Deluxe Station Wagon isn’t just any Bus – it’s a piece of civil-rights history, and a memory of a family that spent decades working to make the country a better place. Esau and Janie B. Jenkins spent several decades fighting to improve the lives of their neighbors on Johns Island, S.C.  From the 1940s through the early 1970s, the Jenkins family built a network of

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Company

Watch the electric ID.R set a record on one of the most beautiful roads in the world

It’s known as “Heaven’s Gate” – the world’s highest naturally formed arch, with an opening some 430 feet tall and 190 feet wide, about 5,000 feet up China’s Tianmen mountain. A hallowed and scenic site for centuries, visitors can reach the gate on a road that ranks among the most scenic, and twisting, of any in the world, with 99 sharp switchbacks. Earlier this month, the Volkswagen ID.R team went to the Tianmen Mountain Big Gate Road to set the first benchmark there of any kind for a perform

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Company

Watch the Volkswagen ID. R take on its latest speed challenge – a racing drone

From Pikes Peak to the Nürburgring and Goodwood, Volkswagen’s electric ID. R race car has set records around the world, showing how electric power can transform vehicle performance. Its latest challenge isn’t a famous track, but another type of breakthrough technology – a racing drone. Launched earlier this decade, drone racing now sports thousands of players worldwide and several professional leagues. All feature tiny, remote-controlled aircraft capable of reaching speeds of 85 mph or mo

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Special Event

Flint brings back its historic Soap Box Derby, with a little push from Volkswagen Group of America

As the cradle of the American automobile industry, Flint, Mich., has always been a playground for four-wheeled innovation. In the boom times of 1936, the town held its first Soap Box Derby for children and adults to home-build their own gravity-powered racers. Thousands of fans and even the occasional national political leader would attend the events, which were held until 1995. Since then, a lack of resources has kept the event on hiatus – until this summer, when Volkswagen Group of America

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Company

Volkswagen developing mobility solutions for people with disabilities

Volkswagen Group of America has a big mission: offering mobility solutions for people with disabilities. The Inclusive Mobility initiative is more than just a name; it’s a program that directly engages with disability groups in the early stages of designing vehicle technologies, user experience and mobility services. The initiative, led by the Inclusive Mobility team at the Innovation and Engineering Center California (IECC) in Belmont, Calif., is an industry first. While there have been pate

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Company

How Pedestrian Monitoring helps improve your view ahead

With millions of drivers and pedestrians sharing the road, it’s more important than ever to help them do so safely. That’s why Volkswagen developed its Pedestrian Monitoring technology as part of its Front Assist system to help drivers stay aware of other road users. The applied technology that makes Pedestrian Monitoring possible is a small radar, a narrow square a few inches on each side that discreetly fits behind the Volkswagen emblem on the front of the vehicle. Able to work in daylight

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Company

Come as you are: Creating a free, safe space for LGBTQ students and allies

Since its partnership with the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in 2011, Volkswagen has been committed to supporting educational programs that foster learning opportunities and connections between art and life. One of the programs made possible by Volkswagen’s partnership with MoMA is Open Art Space, a relaxed weekly drop-in program for LGBTQ high school students and allies who are interested in thinking about, and making, art in a creative and welcoming environment. The program is facilitated by

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Company

A new era for Volkswagen innovation in America begins with the Type 20 Concept

Some two decades ago, the Volkswagen Group opened a three-person office in Silicon Valley, looking to tap the region’s burgeoning tech scene for new transportation breakthroughs. Today, that office includes more than 180 engineers, designers, researchers and social scientists – the largest such office outside Germany. Earlier this month, Volkswagen announced a new name and increased responsibility for the site: the Innovation and Engineering Center California. And to demonstrate how it wi

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Company

Volkswagen collaborates with DonorsChoose.org to support classrooms across America

Chances are if you have a child in public school in the United States, that school has received support from DonorsChoose.org. From its start in 2000 by a Bronx teacher, the crowdsourced giving network has raised more than $830 million for some 500,000 teachers. Four out of five public schools nationwide have had at least one DonorsChoose.org project, and educators have turned to the network to help fund everything from classroom decorations to clothes for needy students – helping some 34 mil

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As the Beetle ends, a look at its impact on design and Volkswagen’s future

The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) holds over 200,000 works of art in its collection from around the world that represent the best modern and contemporary art. One of these is a 1959 Volkswagen Beetle, acquired as an example of iconic industrial design and cultural impact.  With approximately 21 million Beetle units built, it was one of the best-selling vehicles globally of the 20th century. With the Beetle’s third generation coming to an end, Volkswagen convened a panel of design experts at

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Company

What becoming ‘carbon neutral’ means to Volkswagen – and why it’s the only way forward

It’s clear the world is getting warmer. It’s time to stop avoiding the question of what to do about it. Under its “Drive Bigger” brand direction, Volkswagen of America plans to embrace this challenge as our calling for the years ahead. By building a future designed to help tackle the problem, we plan to drive a big change in American transportation, just as we did with the original Beetle. As one of the world’s largest automakers, the Volkswagen Group has a global responsibility – one it p

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Company

Watch the Volkswagen ID. R drive the fastest all-electric lap around the Nurburgring

Thirty-six years ago, one of the world’s fastest race cars – a Porsche 956 – tore around the 12.9 miles of the Nürburgring Nordschelife race track in a scant 6 minutes, 11.13 seconds. That record stood for more than three decades as an ultimate testament to power, engineering and skill, only falling to an experimental Porsche last year that was custom-built for the task. Last Monday, that record was surpassed for the second time – by an all-electric car. The Volkswagen ID. R electric race

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Company

From “Think Small” to “Drive Bigger,” Volkswagen embraces a new purpose

In the 1960s, Volkswagen came to America’s attention through ads like the “Think Small” campaign that dared to be different than other automakers. They emphasized the connection owners make with their vehicles. And they spoke to a cultural moment, resonating with drivers who were less conspicuous in their consumption. Today, Volkswagen launches a new direction for itself in America with an advertising campaign that breaks with convention again. “Drive Bigger” isn’t just a slogan – it’s th

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The next step in autonomous cars? Helping avoid motion sickness

Carsickness can happen to anyone: the confusion between the motion your eyes see, and the motion your body feels, can lead to a queasiness in your stomach or something worse. About a third of all people are susceptible to it—women more than men, children more than adults—but under the right conditions, anyone can suffer from it. And many of those conditions could become more common once autonomous vehicles hit the road. At the Volkswagen Group research labs in Wolfsburg, scientists are st

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Vehicles

How To Speak Smartly About Beautiful Cars, Like The Volkswagen Arteon

Even as it hits the United States, the Volkswagen Arteon already has won awards for its unique style. A blend of four-door sedan, hatchback and sport-car cues, the Arteon looks like no other vehicle on the road, and its role as the flagship of Volkswagen in America suggests where the brand’s future designs will evolve. There may be no more challenging job in the automotive world than designing a vehicle. It’s not just taking a blueprint of a chassis from engineers and making it look prett

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Golf R

One of the first Golf R Spektrums heads north to a true Volkswagen enthusiast

Imagine designing your favorite car in your dream color. Thanks to the new Volkswagen Spektrum Program, Jennifer Jensen was able to turn her vision – a 2019 Volkswagen Golf R in Violet Touch Pearl – into a reality. Jensen was one of the first customers in the United States to receive the 288-hp, all-wheel-drive Volkswagen Golf R in one of the 40 custom-order Spektrum colors. The Auto Exotica magazine publisher and TV host resides in Oshkosh, Wis., and her collection of high performance an

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Magazine

9 Things You Didn’t Know About the All-New Arteon

The camera flashes popped and the crowd “oohed” and “aahed” when Volkswagen unveiled the 2019 Volkswagen Arteon at the Chicago Auto Show. Two fastback sedans, in metallic red and yellow, rotated on the stage, and although the iconic VW logo adorned both trunks and hoods, the cars were unlike any Volkswagen vehicles attendees had ever seen. That was by design. With the Arteon, Volkswagen set out to establish a new design direction for the future, providing a glimpse of the next generation o

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Magazine

All in the VW Family

Zoey. Gretchen. Henry. Izzy. In any other family, it might be a list of children’s names. But Chris and Erin Scheureman of Oregon aren’t like any other family. They’re Volkswagen enthusiasts who would be hard-pressed to find a family as passionate as they are for their air-cooled models. The oldest VW in their collection of 8 dates from 1959 (Henry, a red-and-white 1959 SO 23 Westfalia). Erin still has the 1966 Beetle (Gretchen) she got in high school, and it’s still running at 368,000 mil

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Community

The magic in the Bus: One woman’s push to restore classic car know-how

Fallon Taylor is not your typical classic-car restorer: she is young, talented and female. She is also an expert at what she considers a “dying trade,” which is repairing and restoring vintage Volkswagen Beetles, Karmann Ghias, and Buses, using old school tools and tricks to regain their former glory. More than half of U.S. drivers are women, but they comprise less than three percent of auto service technicians and mechanics, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. The statis

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For EV battery recycling, Volkswagen thinks ahead to the end of the road

One of the great success stories in recycling may lie under the hood of your car. In the United States, 99 percent of all lead-acid automotive batteries are recycled, making them among one of the most-recycled goods you can buy. When your battery wears out, you can easily turn it in when buying a new one; that old battery can then be shredded or melted down, and its raw materials reused. The new generation of electric vehicles will bring a massive increase in the number of batteries on

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