Volkswagen says it is making a statement by staging a world premiere of a new model for the first time in China – its largest market. The largest markets for what is now the third generation of the Touareg are China, Europe and Russia. Worldwide sales of the previous two generations amount to nearly one million units.

Volkswagen is presenting the fully digitalised Innovision Cockpit for the first time in the new Touareg. Here the digital instruments (Digital Cockpit with 12-inch display) and the top Discover Premium infotainment system (with 15-inch display) merge to form a digital operating, information, communication and entertainment unit that hardly needs any conventional buttons or switches. Always-on, offering intuitive control and maximum personalisation – with the Innovision Cockpit, the Touareg provides the blueprint for tomorrow’s digital interior today.

Drivers use the Innovision Cockpit to adapt the assistance, handling and comfort systems specifically to their personal tastes; the car becomes ‘their’ Touareg. This opens up a world in which the driver and on-board guests no longer have to adapt to the car; rather the car adapts to them. Like a new smartphone, the Volkswagen is set up and tuned to personal needs. This is made possible by a new high level of connected systems and programmes – controlled via digital interfaces and the multifunction steering wheel.

The company says  the Touareg is launching with the largest range of assistance, handling and comfort systems ever to be integrated into a Volkswagen. They include technologies such as the Night Vision assistance system (detects people and animals in darkness via a thermal imaging camera), Roadwork Lane Assist (semi-automated steering and lane keeping, accelerating and braking up to 60 km/h), Front Cross Traffic Assist (reacts to cross traffic in front of the Touareg), active all-wheel steering (makes the Touareg handle like a compact car), new roll stabilisation with electromechanically controlled anti-roll bars, ‘IQ.Light – LED matrix headlights’ (interactive, camera-based dipped and main beam headlight control) and a ‘Windshield Head-up Display’ projected directly onto the windscreen.

The driver experiences these systems as a single unit in the new Touareg. They are simply there – interconnected via a new central control unit – working imperceptibly in the background and making travel safer, more convenient and more intuitive than ever.

Compared to its predecessor, the third generation Touareg is moderately wider and longer.  The added exterior length leads to a significant increase in luggage capacity, from 697 to 810 litres (with rear bench seat up). Cargo there is hidden from onlookers by an optional electrically extending and retracting luggage compartment cover. Despite its increased length and width, the car body is 106 kg lighter because of its mixed material construction of aluminium (48 per cent) and high-tech steels (52 per cent).

In Europe, Volkswagen will initially offer two V6 diesel engines for the new 2018 Touareg with outputs of 228 bhp and 282 bhp. In a number of markets, this will also be followed by a V6 petrol engine 335 bhp and a V8 turbodiesel 415 bhp. A new plug-in hybrid drive (362 bhp of system power) is being prepared for China; its exact launch date in Europe is still open.

Volkswagen says the 2018 Touareg is an important milestone in what it describes as the largest product and technology campaign in the history of the VW brand. The brand’s range of SUVs is also being expanded comprehensively. It currently consists of the new T-Roc, the Tiguan, the new Tiguan Allspace (Europe) and Tiguan L (China), the new Atlas (USA) and the Teramont (China), plus the now completely redesigned Touareg as Volkswagen’s top SUV model. Volkswagen will also be further extending the lower end of its SUV range with the compact T-Cross. The first all-electric SUV from Volkswagen, the I.D. CROZZ, will arrive on the market in 2020.