Speaker 1: Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production of I Heart Radios
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio and I love all things tech. And
Speaker 1: while I was doing the retrospective episodes about the last
Speaker 1: decade in Tech two thousand nine to two well eighteen,
Speaker 1: because I had already done two thousand nineteen, I mentioned
Speaker 1: the scandal around Volkswagen and the devices that were used
Speaker 1: to help cheat on emissions testing, and it made me
Speaker 1: realize that I haven't done full episodes about the founding
Speaker 1: and evolution of the company. It's a company that's no
Speaker 1: stranger to controversy and scandal, and it's also a company
Speaker 1: that has created some iconic vehicles, specifically the Volkswagen Beatle.
Speaker 1: So today I thought I would look at the story
Speaker 1: of Volkswagen, and this is going to become more than
Speaker 1: one episode because the company is several decades old, but
Speaker 1: will mainly focus on Volkswagen and the Beatle for this one. Now,
Speaker 1: it's always a challenge for me to figure out exactly
Speaker 1: where I should begin with these histories, So for this one,
Speaker 1: I thought the best thing would be to start with
Speaker 1: the founder of the company, Ferdinand Porsche. And this is
Speaker 1: the same Porsche whose name would grace the sports car
Speaker 1: and luxury car company. Porsche was born in eighteen seventy
Speaker 1: five in Maffersdorff, Austria, Hungary, which is in a region
Speaker 1: that's now known as Libraric or Liberate and I apologize
Speaker 1: I don't know the correct pronunciation, but in the Czech
Speaker 1: Republic now. As a child, he became fascinated with technology,
Speaker 1: and particularly with electricity. He pursued this interest he learned
Speaker 1: more about mechanical systems and then as a young man,
Speaker 1: he landed a job at an electrical company in Vienna
Speaker 1: called Baila Eggar and Company. He was just eighteen years
Speaker 1: old at the time. Now around that same time he
Speaker 1: enrolled in the Imperial Technical University at Reichenburg it's now
Speaker 1: the Vienna University of Technology. His affinity for tech and
Speaker 1: his enthusiasm for the subject paid off, and he would
Speaker 1: earn a promotion at his job to a management position
Speaker 1: pretty early on. By eight nine seven, he was beginning
Speaker 1: to experiment with the design and production of electric hub motors. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: we get to talk about some tech, Okay, So first,
Speaker 1: let's remind ourselves about the basics of electric motors, and
Speaker 1: it all comes down to harnessing electromagnetic energy and making
Speaker 1: it do mechanical work. So it's all about that interplay
Speaker 1: between electricity and magnetism. Now, remember electromagnetic energy is one
Speaker 1: of the four fundamental forces of nature, along with gravity
Speaker 1: and then the strong and weak nuclear forces. There are
Speaker 1: other people who hypothesize additional fundamental forces that would help
Speaker 1: explain things that these forces don't explain in our current
Speaker 1: understanding of the universe, but that's a topic for a
Speaker 1: different show alright. So electric motors, essentially, it's all about magnets. Now,
Speaker 1: as I'm sure you all know, magnets can either attract
Speaker 1: or repel each other. It all depends upon the magnetic polls.
Speaker 1: Opposite magnetic poles attract one another, so north pole attracts
Speaker 1: to south pole. Now, if you have like poles, those
Speaker 1: repel each other. So the north poles on two different
Speaker 1: magnets will push against each other. And if you could
Speaker 1: just harness this natural phenomenon, you can make magnets do work.
Speaker 1: That's the basis behind the electric motor. It's also the
Speaker 1: basis behind a lot of people's assumptions that you can
Speaker 1: use magnets to create some sort of perpetual motion machine,
Speaker 1: but there are other factors at play that prevent that,
Speaker 1: largely things like friction. Again, that's a topic for another show.
Speaker 1: So a very simple electric motor has a few basic components.
Speaker 1: One is a field magnet. It's typically a permanent magnet.
Speaker 1: This is the stationary magnet or pair of magnets that
Speaker 1: is positioned so that the north and south poles of
Speaker 1: the magnet are on either side of an armature that's
Speaker 1: positioned in the middle. So think of like a horseshoe
Speaker 1: magnet right has a north pole in the south pole,
Speaker 1: think of it holding it up right like a U,
Speaker 1: and then think about suspending an axle in between the
Speaker 1: north and south poles right in the middle. Now attached
Speaker 1: to the armature are a couple of other elements that
Speaker 1: I'll get to in a moment. The armature itself is
Speaker 1: a rotor, which means it can rotate, so unlike the magnet,
Speaker 1: which is stationary, the rotor can actually rotate. And it's
Speaker 1: also an electro magnet, meaning you have some sort of
Speaker 1: conductive wire wrapped around a core running a current through
Speaker 1: that conductive wire generates a magnetic field. This is a
Speaker 1: basic feature of electromagnetism, where running a current through a
Speaker 1: conductive wire that's in a coil will generate a magnetic field. Also,
Speaker 1: if you bring a coil of conductive wire within a
Speaker 1: magnetic field, that will induce a current to flow through
Speaker 1: that wire, at least briefly. A fluctuating magnetic field will
Speaker 1: cause it to do that repeatedly um and make a
Speaker 1: steady flow of current. Well, the magnetic field of the
Speaker 1: electro magnet interacts with the magnetic field of the field magnet.
Speaker 1: The north pole of the electro magnet gets repelled by
Speaker 1: the north pole of the field magnet, and the north
Speaker 1: pole of the electro magnet would be attracted to the
Speaker 1: south pole of the field magnet. And since the rotor
Speaker 1: can rotate, the armature will twist. As a result of
Speaker 1: this natural effect, the magnetic field creates a rotational motion
Speaker 1: in the armature. Ah, you say, but what happens when
Speaker 1: this twist is complete? I mean when in the north
Speaker 1: and south poles of the two magnets just match up,
Speaker 1: and thus your motor would just stop turning. I mean,
Speaker 1: the north pole of the electro magnet would be in
Speaker 1: in uh, you know, near the south pole of the
Speaker 1: field magnet, and then it would just stay there because
Speaker 1: that's where the attraction is. So wouldn't it just lock
Speaker 1: into place, and wouldn't the wires get twisted up? So
Speaker 1: even if it did keep rotating, it would eventually have
Speaker 1: to stop. Anyway, Well, if all you had done is
Speaker 1: rat to wire around a rotating you know, electro magnet
Speaker 1: and turned it on, then yes, it would stop. It
Speaker 1: wouldn't be able to continue rotating, or the wires would
Speaker 1: twist up and stop it that way, But you have
Speaker 1: to add in an extra element, and you get what
Speaker 1: most electric motors are based off of. And so this
Speaker 1: element is called a commutator. All right, Now, this is
Speaker 1: a little tricky to describe in an audio podcast, but
Speaker 1: stick with me. So imagine that you have a copper
Speaker 1: band like a copper ring, but it's a wide band.
Speaker 1: Only we're not gonna put it on our finger and
Speaker 1: make it turn green. So instead, imagine that you've got
Speaker 1: this wide ring band ring and you cut it in half,
Speaker 1: so now you've got two half bands. And imagine that
Speaker 1: you shave a bit off the ends of the bands
Speaker 1: or the half bands, so that they don't quite make
Speaker 1: a whole ring anymore when you bring them together. And
Speaker 1: then you take your armature, which is just the right
Speaker 1: diameter for these half bands to fit on the outside,
Speaker 1: and you attach those half bands, so there's a little
Speaker 1: gap in between these half bands, but otherwise they are
Speaker 1: clasping either side of this armature. Now, the electromagnetic wire
Speaker 1: is attached to those copper plates, which means the wire
Speaker 1: and the plates are all part of the same rotating piece.
Speaker 1: They are not connected to the larger device, so they
Speaker 1: aren't going to get tangled up right because they're not
Speaker 1: actually making contact with any of the state actionary elements
Speaker 1: of the motor. The armature and commutator can rotate within
Speaker 1: this uh this motor and the motor itself has another
Speaker 1: piece called the brush. The brush is stationary. You can
Speaker 1: think of that as an even larger ring that fits
Speaker 1: right around where the copper plates are, and it has
Speaker 1: elements that can reach out and brush those copper plates
Speaker 1: through which electric current can flow through. So when you
Speaker 1: turn it on, electricity flows through the brush and then
Speaker 1: makes contact with these copper plates, which generates the current
Speaker 1: that goes through the electro magnet and then that generates
Speaker 1: a magnetic field, and thus it needs to turn because
Speaker 1: of the field magnet. Now the current is of the
Speaker 1: direct current variety. This is the type of current that
Speaker 1: moves in one direction only. This is your basic electric motor.
Speaker 1: There are some that work with alternating current, but we're
Speaker 1: specifically talking about d C here. So this is the
Speaker 1: type that comes from a battery. And as the current
Speaker 1: moves through the brush, the copper plates of the commutator
Speaker 1: transfer the electricity to the wire and the electro magnet
Speaker 1: that generates the magnetic field it interacts with the field
Speaker 1: of the permanent magnet. The armature rotates, but through this
Speaker 1: rotation the copper plates change positions, they flip, and you know,
Speaker 1: it's not a full connected ring. There's that little gap
Speaker 1: in either side, so there's a moment where the plates
Speaker 1: are not making full contact with those sides of the brush.
Speaker 1: So when the commutator turns, this has the same effect
Speaker 1: as the direction of electricity changing. Because the orientation of
Speaker 1: the rest of the circuit has changed, the electricity is
Speaker 1: still flowing in the same direction that the effect of
Speaker 1: the circuit is as if it's an alternating current That
Speaker 1: means the magnetic pole of the electro magnet flips as well.
Speaker 1: That means the process will repeat itself because what used
Speaker 1: to be the north pole of electro magnet is now
Speaker 1: the south pole, and the south pole is not going
Speaker 1: to get along with the south pole the field magnet.
Speaker 1: It's gonna get repelled, so it again twists. That whole
Speaker 1: twisting rotating process repeats itself and again. As it continues
Speaker 1: to turn, the copper plates rotate and the direction of
Speaker 1: electricity switches again, and this happens over and over. The
Speaker 1: poles of the electro magnet keep switching, and that ends
Speaker 1: up creating this magnetic force between the field magnet and
Speaker 1: the electro magnet, and it perpetuates this rotational motion. So
Speaker 1: that's the basis of an electric motor. You essentially get
Speaker 1: a generator if you reverse this, where you're using the
Speaker 1: rotation of the different elements to generate electricity through the
Speaker 1: conductive wire. But that's matter for another time. So an
Speaker 1: electric hub motor is a motor that's mounted on the
Speaker 1: inside of the hub of a wheel. The motor is
Speaker 1: stationary with regards to the vehicle frame and the end
Speaker 1: of the rotor attaches to some element on the inside
Speaker 1: of the wheels hub, and the rotational force of the
Speaker 1: motor transfers to the inside of the wheels hub, so
Speaker 1: that the wheel of the vehicle begins to rotate. This
Speaker 1: is a type of direct drive motor and you frequently
Speaker 1: see it in stuff like electric bikes and e bike
Speaker 1: conversion kits. So Porsche was making vehicles that used motors
Speaker 1: that were inside the wheels of the vehicles themselves, and
Speaker 1: this created the rotational force necessary to make those vehicles go,
Speaker 1: and he would raise them against other similarly designed vehicles
Speaker 1: in the late nineteenth century, and frequently he won. So
Speaker 1: Porsche then went on to join a company called hoff
Speaker 1: Vagen Fabric Jacob Loner and Company. And I apologize for
Speaker 1: my terrible pronunciation. This was part of the Austro Hungarian Army.
Speaker 1: The army itself own this company, and he was one
Speaker 1: of the first employees in a brand new department within
Speaker 1: the company that developed electric cars. And at that department
Speaker 1: he developed a vehicle called the Sea Point to Phaeton,
Speaker 1: which he designed as the P one and P one.
Speaker 1: The P and P one stands for Porsche, so technically
Speaker 1: you could argue this was the first Porsche. It looks
Speaker 1: a bit like the type of carriage that you would
Speaker 1: typically see pulled behind a horse, except this one didn't
Speaker 1: need the horse. But yeah, you look at and you're like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: that looks kind of like a horse drawn carriage, just
Speaker 1: there's no horse there. One interesting historical note about Ferdinand
Speaker 1: Porsche involves another Ferdinand. This one would be the Archduke
Speaker 1: Franz Ferdinand of Austria. Back in nineteen o two, Porsche
Speaker 1: was drafted into army service, which was sort of a
Speaker 1: matter of course at the time, and he happened to
Speaker 1: serve as the chauffeur to the arched Duke for a
Speaker 1: short while. This is the same Archduke who on June
Speaker 1: nineteen fourteen was assassinated and his death precipitated World War One.
Speaker 1: And I know that sounds like a tangent for a
Speaker 1: show about Volkswagen, but I would argue, there's actually a
Speaker 1: through line that we can apply with the benefit of hindsight.
Speaker 1: So let's get back to Porsche. After his service and
Speaker 1: after working for loner, Porsche switched companies again. He joined
Speaker 1: the Austro Daimelric company in nineteen o six. He worked
Speaker 1: there for nearly twenty years, and during World War One
Speaker 1: was part of engineering teams who developed aircraft engines for
Speaker 1: the Austrian Emperor, as well as heavy land vehicles designed
Speaker 1: to pull artillery. After the war, he would then join
Speaker 1: the Daimler Motor and Gazelle Shaft Company in Stuttgart in
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty three. He worked on many projects, including a
Speaker 1: Mercedes the introduced the supercharger. Uh. This is a mechanism
Speaker 1: that supplies high pressure air to the cylinders of a
Speaker 1: combustion engine in order to increase the efficiency of combustion
Speaker 1: to get a bigger bang, which is the secret to
Speaker 1: internal combustion engines. It's really a series of controlled explosions
Speaker 1: within cylinders that push out pistons. I'll talk more about
Speaker 1: that a little later in this episode. Porsche worked as
Speaker 1: a manager at Daimler for several years until nineteen thirty one.
Speaker 1: Then he would leave to found his own company named Porsche. Well,
Speaker 1: technically it had a much longer name, but I've butchered
Speaker 1: enough germantic pronunciation up to this point, so I'm not
Speaker 1: going to try that one. Porsche's son, Ferdinand anton Erst Porsche,
Speaker 1: would work with him at this new company and his
Speaker 1: son would play an important part in developing the first Volkswagen.
Speaker 1: But something else would also play a pivotal part in
Speaker 1: this story, and that someone was Adolph Hitler. Hitler was
Speaker 1: Chancellor of Germany in nineteen thirty four and he issued
Speaker 1: a challenge to the automotive manufacturers in Germany. He wanted
Speaker 1: a German company to design a vehicle that could be
Speaker 1: mass produced easily and cheaply enough to be affordable to
Speaker 1: the average family in Germany. Now, ideally, a German family
Speaker 1: consisting of a husband, wife and three children would be
Speaker 1: able to use such a car to travel throughout the
Speaker 1: country on the new Autobahn. The price of the car
Speaker 1: should be no more than nine hundred reich Mark that
Speaker 1: was the currency of the time, and a national savings
Speaker 1: plan was proposed that would allow citizens to put money
Speaker 1: toward the vehicle so they would be able to save money.
Speaker 1: Specifically for one of these it was to be the
Speaker 1: People's car, thus the Volkswagen or Folkswagen you can think
Speaker 1: of that as folks Wagon. The father and son Porsche
Speaker 1: team decided to take the engineering challenge and to submit
Speaker 1: a design for consideration. So the two got to work.
Speaker 1: They came up with an idea that would essentially be
Speaker 1: a a predecessor to the Volkswagen Beetle, and they submitted
Speaker 1: it to the German government. Their work earned them a contract.
Speaker 1: Hitler himself praised Porsche in n five at the German
Speaker 1: Auto Show, stating that the design met his vision for
Speaker 1: what a people's car would be and that the path
Speaker 1: had been laid to make that design a reality. This
Speaker 1: design would lead to the production of the first volks
Speaker 1: Folkswagen UH the Type one or Folkswagen Beetle. The curvy
Speaker 1: car which housed its engine in the back of the
Speaker 1: vehicle rather than under the hood in the front, would
Speaker 1: become a true icon. Porsche would get considerable support from
Speaker 1: the German government in order to manufacture this car. There
Speaker 1: was no manufacturing facility in Germany that was suitable for
Speaker 1: the task at that time, so they were gonna have
Speaker 1: to build a new one. And more over, the site
Speaker 1: for the factory needed to be in a location that
Speaker 1: was easily accessible. It had to be close to major
Speaker 1: areas of transportation in order to get materials and then
Speaker 1: to ship cars back out when they were done. So,
Speaker 1: the team began to search for a suitable location, trying
Speaker 1: to find one that would be accessible by boat through
Speaker 1: a canal system, by vehicle via the Autobahn, and by
Speaker 1: railway lines. They settled on a location near a medieval
Speaker 1: castle named Wolfsburg. They built not just a factory, but
Speaker 1: an entire small city to support the people who would
Speaker 1: be working in the factory, so it would include homes
Speaker 1: and later more insidious structures. Get to that. The name
Speaker 1: of the city was originally Statt derk KDF Vaughan, or
Speaker 1: City of the KDF Car. KDF itself stood for craft
Speaker 1: Dutch Freudough, which means strength through joy, and it referred
Speaker 1: to a Nazi organization that promoted a vision of wealthy
Speaker 1: and advanced Germany. Things would not turn out to be
Speaker 1: strength through joy, however. I'll explain more in just a moment,
Speaker 1: but first let's take a quick break. Money to build
Speaker 1: out this manufacturing facility came largely from trade unions in Germany.
Speaker 1: The unions actually provided so much of the cash that
Speaker 1: was needed to get the factory up and running that
Speaker 1: to this day they still hold some sway in the company.
Speaker 1: Union representatives still sit on the supervisory board for Volkswagen today,
Speaker 1: and the company is not allowed to just move production
Speaker 1: from one plant to another without their express approval. First,
Speaker 1: the manufacturing facility itself got the name Volkswagen Plant, probably
Speaker 1: because Porsche didn't want to call it the Porsche Plant. Now,
Speaker 1: as the facility was being built, things were changing rapidly
Speaker 1: in Germany. The Nazi Party essentially took over the unions
Speaker 1: and made them part of the German Labor Front, the
Speaker 1: party's own union organization, and it was under this version
Speaker 1: of Germany's unions that Volkswagen the company would come into being.
Speaker 1: Germany would also start to invade other countries in Europe,
Speaker 1: and World War Two happened as a result of that. Now,
Speaker 1: due to all these changes, the facility would actually produce
Speaker 1: relatively few cars, rather than the mass produced vehicles that
Speaker 1: had been envisioned for every German family throughout the country.
Speaker 1: It would actually end up building fewer than seven hundred
Speaker 1: Volkswagen Beetles before World War Two really started to ramp up.
Speaker 1: Most of those would end up going to influential German families,
Speaker 1: particularly members of the Nazi Party, um not the common
Speaker 1: German resident. Hitler notably received the first convertible off the
Speaker 1: manufacturing floor. The savings plan that had been proposed, the
Speaker 1: one that promised to give the average German a chance
Speaker 1: at owning a vehicle of his or her own, was
Speaker 1: pretty much out the window as the company shut down
Speaker 1: all of civilian production during the war. Most of Volkswagen's
Speaker 1: plants assets were actually directed towards producing equipment and munitions
Speaker 1: for the German armed forces in support of the Access
Speaker 1: Powers during the war, and that included stuff like land
Speaker 1: mines and tank parts. Also, something that absolutely should not
Speaker 1: be forgotten that we have to address is that much
Speaker 1: of the labor at this facility was forced labor. In fact,
Speaker 1: a lot of the early workforce came from Soviet prisoners
Speaker 1: of war who were forced to work at Volkswagen's manufacturing facility.
Speaker 1: Over time, the company would put other prisoners of war,
Speaker 1: also displaced people essentially kidnapped people from Eastern Europe, and
Speaker 1: concentration camp inmates all to work at the facility. The
Speaker 1: site became home to a concentration camp called our Bites
Speaker 1: Dworff in nineteen forty two. Ultimately, three more con centration
Speaker 1: camps would be added to the campus and eight forced
Speaker 1: labor camps as well. As the war progressed. At one point,
Speaker 1: forced labor made up sixty percent of the total workforce
Speaker 1: for the company, so it's impossible to describe the labor
Speaker 1: practices of Volkswagen as anything other than deplorable during this time.
Speaker 1: It would also be a part of Volkswagen's history that
Speaker 1: the company avoided acknowledging officially for many decades. It would
Speaker 1: eventually make reparations for this, but it would be many
Speaker 1: decades before that would actually happen. The plant did manufacture
Speaker 1: a couple of different cars specifically for military use during
Speaker 1: this time. The first became known as the kuble Wagan,
Speaker 1: which means bucket seat car. It was essentially the German
Speaker 1: counterpart to the US general purpose military vehicle a k a.
Speaker 1: The Jeep. Now that's not to say that the kuble
Speaker 1: Wagon and the Jeep were similar. They were actually very
Speaker 1: different in lots of different ways, but they were each
Speaker 1: intended to serve a similar purpose, namely, moving people too
Speaker 1: difficult to reach destinations over rough terrain, often in battle situations. Initially,
Speaker 1: officers in the armed forces in Germany were at odds
Speaker 1: of whether or not they should even implement the kuble Wagon,
Speaker 1: but that prompted Hitler himself to step in and demand
Speaker 1: Porsche's vehicle be put into use. Also, it was in
Speaker 1: many ways of variation on the Volkswagen Beetle. Although Porsche
Speaker 1: would work with other designers to solve problems like reducing
Speaker 1: the weight of the vehicle while still achieving the performance
Speaker 1: that the military was demanding, the kubel Wagen was a
Speaker 1: really lightweight vehicle and that was mandated by the German government.
Speaker 1: It was one of the requirements. The most common version
Speaker 1: of this vehicle did not have four wheel drive, but
Speaker 1: it did have a limited slip differential. So what what
Speaker 1: the heck is that? Alright? So a differential is a
Speaker 1: gear assembly, and its purpose is to allow one wheel
Speaker 1: on an axle to turn at a different speed than
Speaker 1: the other wheel on the axle. So you've got these
Speaker 1: two wheels. They're on the same axle, but you want
Speaker 1: them to be able to rotate at different speeds. Now,
Speaker 1: if you're someone like me who doesn't know a ton
Speaker 1: about cars, you might ask, why the heck would you
Speaker 1: want two wheels on the same axle to turn at
Speaker 1: different speeds? And the answer is physics. Use silly person. Okay, So,
Speaker 1: if you're traveling in a straight line. You know you're
Speaker 1: on level ground, You're just going down a straight road.
Speaker 1: You wouldn't want your wheels turning at different speeds. That
Speaker 1: would be kind of disastrous. You want them all rotating
Speaker 1: it essentially the same speed as you go down the road.
Speaker 1: But of course roads are not perfectly straight. They have
Speaker 1: curves that you have to navigate, and this is where
Speaker 1: a differential is important. See a four wheeled vehicle, if
Speaker 1: you've got one of those, If you got driving a
Speaker 1: standard car, that means two wheels are going to be
Speaker 1: on the inside of any given curve, and two wheels
Speaker 1: are going to be on the outside of any given curve,
Speaker 1: and the wheels on the inside have to travel a
Speaker 1: shorter distance than the wheels on the outside. Right, the
Speaker 1: further out from the middle of the curve you get,
Speaker 1: the greater the distance you're going to cover in the
Speaker 1: same amount of time, which means the wheels on the
Speaker 1: outside curve would need to rotate faster than those on
Speaker 1: the inside in order to make a smooth turn. Otherwise
Speaker 1: you would have an enormous amount of tension build up
Speaker 1: on that outside wheel and you would either get some
Speaker 1: skipping with the wheel or the axle itself would break
Speaker 1: apart from the pressure the incredible tension that was being
Speaker 1: built up. So differentials allow wheels to spin at different
Speaker 1: rotational speeds, and they do this with a series of
Speaker 1: interlocking gears, and open differential is the simplest form of this,
Speaker 1: and it supplies an equal amount of torque or rotational
Speaker 1: force to each of the wheels on an axle. But
Speaker 1: that can sometimes be a problem particul sularly if you're
Speaker 1: working with an off road vehicle like the Kuble Wagon.
Speaker 1: Those vehicles can sometimes end up in places where one
Speaker 1: of the wheels on an axle has little to no
Speaker 1: contact with the ground. And if that happens to be
Speaker 1: one of the wheels that's actually you know, connected to
Speaker 1: that drive train. Because remember it's a two wheel drive vehicle.
Speaker 1: Only the front or back wheels are connected to one another.
Speaker 1: The other two wheels are independent of each other. In
Speaker 1: the case of the Kuble Wagon, it's the rear wheels.
Speaker 1: It was another real rear wheel drive vehicle. But if
Speaker 1: you have one of those two rear wheels up in
Speaker 1: the air, it's just gonna spin, right. If it's just
Speaker 1: an open differential, that torque is still being applied to it,
Speaker 1: it's spinning and that energy is going to waste. Limited
Speaker 1: slip differentials allow a car to apply more torque to
Speaker 1: a non slipping wheel. So if one wheel is spinning
Speaker 1: more or less freely, then more torque can go to
Speaker 1: the wheel that has greater traction and potentially dislodge the
Speaker 1: vehicle from whatever position it's stuck in. Not to describe
Speaker 1: it in further detail would be pretty tricky for an
Speaker 1: audio podcast, so instead, I recommend you look up how
Speaker 1: differentials work on how stuff Works dot com. That's my
Speaker 1: old employer. I don't have any association with them anymore,
Speaker 1: but I still love that website. It's still an amazing
Speaker 1: resource and it does a great job at describing how
Speaker 1: differentials work and gives illustrations and explains in greater details.
Speaker 1: So go check that out. But for our episode, the
Speaker 1: important thing to note is that the limited slip differential
Speaker 1: allowed the lightweight Kuble Wagon to perform nearly as well
Speaker 1: as the four wheel drive vehicles could in off road situations. Now,
Speaker 1: there were a few of these produced that did have
Speaker 1: four wheel drive, but in general, Porsche found that the
Speaker 1: process of creating a four wheel drive Kuble wagon was
Speaker 1: pretty expensive and it was hard to justify because you
Speaker 1: only got relatively minor improvements in performance capability. So, in
Speaker 1: other words, the the hay out was less than the
Speaker 1: investment you were putting in, so very few were actually
Speaker 1: made that were four wheel drive vehicles. The Volkswagen Company
Speaker 1: would design and produce another military vehicle during World War
Speaker 1: Two called the schvim Wagan, which, as the name probably
Speaker 1: hints to you, was an amphibious vehicle, meaning it could
Speaker 1: go from land to water and water to land. At first,
Speaker 1: the company tried to rely upon the Kobo Wagan's body
Speaker 1: as the basis for this vehicle, but designer Irvin Kommenda
Speaker 1: found that the chassis was hindering the vehicle's movement through water.
Speaker 1: It just wasn't working. The Swimwagan would get a different
Speaker 1: kind of vehicle body that actually look more like a
Speaker 1: boat or honestly, I think if you were to pull
Speaker 1: the top off a Schwemwagan, it would look like you
Speaker 1: were left with a bathtub on wheels. The schvim Wagan
Speaker 1: had a propeller that was on the back of the
Speaker 1: vehicle as well. It was actually on a hinge, so
Speaker 1: you can have it flipped up when it was just
Speaker 1: in regular land use mode, and then when you went
Speaker 1: into the water, you could flip down the propeller and
Speaker 1: it would engage in an extension to the vehicle's drive train,
Speaker 1: and the drive train would provide the rotational power to
Speaker 1: the propeller. It could only go forward. You could not
Speaker 1: move the propeller in reverse. And that is why Germany
Speaker 1: issued oars to Schwimwagan drivers or pilots or captains or
Speaker 1: whatever they were called. Anyway, they got oars as well
Speaker 1: in case they ever had to go backwards. In y one,
Speaker 1: Ferdinand Porsche's son in law, Anton pH became the manager
Speaker 1: of the Volkswagen factory, and he had been a member
Speaker 1: of the Nazi Party since nineteen thirty three. He would
Speaker 1: actually end up being inducted into the s S before
Speaker 1: the end of World War Two. He was in charge
Speaker 1: of the Volkswagen Facility uh And and most of the
Speaker 1: operations that saw the company make use of forced labor
Speaker 1: and the construction of concentration camps. He was also the
Speaker 1: head of a group of reserve soldiers who worked for Volkswagen,
Speaker 1: and when Allied forces made their way into Germany towards
Speaker 1: the end of World War Two, he would command the
Speaker 1: soldiers and he also ultimately fled to his father in
Speaker 1: law's estate, Ferdinand Porsche's estate in Austria UH. In the process,
Speaker 1: he also made sure to transfer about one point four
Speaker 1: million dollars worth of reich Mark from the company Coffers
Speaker 1: to his own personal accounts. At the end of World
Speaker 1: War Two, both Fernand Porsche and his son Faery Porsche
Speaker 1: Uh that's you know, the other Ferdinand Porsche, as well
Speaker 1: as Anton Pish were arrested and held by French authorities.
Speaker 1: Fairy was released after six months, so Porsche the younger
Speaker 1: was let out after half a year. But Porsche the
Speaker 1: elder and Anton were a different story. They were in
Speaker 1: prison for about two years but were ultimately set free.
Speaker 1: As well. As for the manufacturing facility, much of it
Speaker 1: was destroyed during World War Two. The fact that it
Speaker 1: was a manufacturing center that played an important role in
Speaker 1: producing material for German forces meant it was also a
Speaker 1: prime bombing target for the Allies. After the war, the
Speaker 1: British took control of the facility and they had the
Speaker 1: opportunity to essentially liquidate everything, sell off everything, but instead
Speaker 1: they decided to reconstruct the facility. They decided that the
Speaker 1: vehicles themselves had value. A British Army officer named Major
Speaker 1: Ivan Hurst was in charge of this operation. He was
Speaker 1: the one who was convinced that the Volkswagen Type one
Speaker 1: or Beatle had real value. First, however, he had a
Speaker 1: small matter of disarming an unexploded bomb that had broke
Speaker 1: and through the roof of the manufacturing plant and was
Speaker 1: stuck between production equipment, So that was scary. The facility
Speaker 1: would get a new name, and by that I mean
Speaker 1: it was actually an old name. It became known as
Speaker 1: Volksburg or Wolfsburg, after the nearby medieval castle. Hurst lobbied
Speaker 1: for the British government to order twenty thousand of the
Speaker 1: Volkswagen Type one two uh end up using them in
Speaker 1: various official capacities, and the government ultimately agreed. By the
Speaker 1: end of nineteen forty five, the factory had made around
Speaker 1: seventeen hundred of the cars and it was starting to
Speaker 1: ramp up production slowly. By nine the plant was finally
Speaker 1: mass producing the vehicle for which it had been intended,
Speaker 1: the Volkswagen Beetle or Type one. The British would hand
Speaker 1: over control of the company to the government of West
Speaker 1: Germany in nineteen forty nine. For the younger folks out
Speaker 1: there in the audience, Germany at one point was split
Speaker 1: it into two countries. For many decades you had East Germany,
Speaker 1: which was a communist country and West Germany, which wasn't.
Speaker 1: And the company would pay a licensing fee to the
Speaker 1: Porsche Company for the rights to produce the Type one
Speaker 1: or Beetle. The two companies, Volkswagen and Porsche would be
Speaker 1: linked together through a relationship that's frankly so legally complicated.
Speaker 1: I really can't get a grip on it, but they
Speaker 1: would remain linked for up to today. So let's talk
Speaker 1: about the Volkswagen Beetle a little bit. So the car
Speaker 1: would become a true staple in Germany. In fact, by
Speaker 1: nine more than half of all the passenger cars produced
Speaker 1: in Germany were Volkswagen Beetles. The cars were truly iconic.
Speaker 1: There was even a series of Disney films in which
Speaker 1: a Volkswagen Beetle was the title character that would be
Speaker 1: Herbie the love Bug, and the word bug was often
Speaker 1: used as a nickname for the VW Beetle as well. Now,
Speaker 1: the Beetle has a pretty distinctive curvy, almost bulbous shape,
Speaker 1: but not that distinctive. What I mean by that is
Speaker 1: that before the VW Beetle, there was actually a car
Speaker 1: called the Tatra V five seventy. It was produced by
Speaker 1: a check automaker named Hans Ledvinka, and the VW Beetle
Speaker 1: didn't just look a little like the older Tatra V
Speaker 1: five seventy. It looked a lot like it, and it
Speaker 1: also featured some of the same engineering innovations. Like the Tatra.
Speaker 1: The Beetle had a rear mounted and air cooled engine,
Speaker 1: and Porsche himself essentially admitted to lifting some design ideas
Speaker 1: from the Tatra vehicle. Before World War two broke out,
Speaker 1: Tatra was bringing a lawsuit against Porsche because of this,
Speaker 1: but then Germany invaded Czechoslovakia or what was then Czechoslovakia,
Speaker 1: and that brought all the lawsuits to an end. Once
Speaker 1: World War two was over, the matter was revisited it
Speaker 1: and ultimately Volkswagen would pay a few million Deutsche marks
Speaker 1: to Tatra income compensation for the use of intellectual property.
Speaker 1: Let's say the financial setback is part of the reason
Speaker 1: that Volkswagen kept producing the Beetle for as long as
Speaker 1: it did. It remained on the market and in the
Speaker 1: production line for so long because the company literally couldn't
Speaker 1: afford to design a lot of new vehicles, and so
Speaker 1: the Beetle would remain in production longer than you typically
Speaker 1: would see a car be in production. And when we
Speaker 1: come back, I'll talk more about the Beetle and it's
Speaker 1: design features, but first let's take another quick break. Okay,
Speaker 1: So the engine in a Volkswagen Beetle, the Volkswagen Type one,
Speaker 1: is a type called a flat four air cooled engine.
Speaker 1: So what the heck does that mean? Well, let's start
Speaker 1: with the flat four. Now, that essentially refers to the
Speaker 1: arrangement of the cylinders for this internal combustion engine. The
Speaker 1: cylinders are where a mixture of fuel and air get
Speaker 1: compressed before a spark plug ignites that mixture and that
Speaker 1: creates the explosion that forces the piston that's that's compressing
Speaker 1: this gas back out to the far end of its stroke.
Speaker 1: This motion, in turn, provides the force that turns a crankshaft.
Speaker 1: Now I've covered the basics of car engines before, so
Speaker 1: I'm not going to go into much further detail here.
Speaker 1: But the cylinders are where explosive force gets harnessed into
Speaker 1: doing useful work of making a vehicle go. In a
Speaker 1: typical engine, like an inline engine, the cylinders are arranged
Speaker 1: so that if you were looking at the engine as
Speaker 1: it was mounted in the car, everything is vertical. The
Speaker 1: cylinders are up and down. The pistons move up and
Speaker 1: down according to your frame of reference. So again that's
Speaker 1: called an inline or straight internal combustion engine with the
Speaker 1: four or however many cylinders in line with one another.
Speaker 1: But the Volkswagen Beetles engine is a flat four. Now
Speaker 1: that means the cylinders are in a horizontal position. You
Speaker 1: have two on either side of the center of the engine,
Speaker 1: so you have two cylinders that are essentially pointing to
Speaker 1: the left and two that are pointing to the right,
Speaker 1: and the pistons in the cylinders opposite each other move
Speaker 1: in sync at least with the Volkswagen's engine. So the
Speaker 1: piston in the cylinders closest to the front of the engine,
Speaker 1: like if you were looking at the engine from the front,
Speaker 1: the two cylinders on the cylinder on the left and
Speaker 1: right that are closest to you, those pistons would be
Speaker 1: moving in and out in sync with one another. So
Speaker 1: not alternating, they would be doing it together. They'd both
Speaker 1: be coming in and both be moving out at the
Speaker 1: same time through each cycle. The two cylinders behind that,
Speaker 1: the ones that are towards the back of the engine
Speaker 1: from your frame of reference, would also be moving in
Speaker 1: sync with each other. Now, the front cylinders and the
Speaker 1: back cylinders would alternate, so the left and right would
Speaker 1: be going in while the left and right in the
Speaker 1: back would be going out. Uh, that's the way they
Speaker 1: would alternate from your perspective. But otherwise you I hope
Speaker 1: you can kind of visualize what I'm saying. And the
Speaker 1: whole point of this is that the motion of the
Speaker 1: cylinders or the motion of the pistons really are what
Speaker 1: transfer energy to the crank shaft and power the drive train. Now,
Speaker 1: as for the air cooled part of this air cooled
Speaker 1: you know, four flat engine, Well, cooling an engine is
Speaker 1: really important because, as you might imagine, if you have
Speaker 1: a machine that relies upon harnessing explosions, that machine can
Speaker 1: get pretty hot, and as things heat up, they can
Speaker 1: expand or even fail Outright, So stuff gets hot beyond
Speaker 1: whatever the operational tolerances, and then you've got a mechanical
Speaker 1: failure just waiting to happen. So you have to have
Speaker 1: some way to pull that heat away from the engine
Speaker 1: and to keep the engine at operational levels. There are
Speaker 1: a couple of different ways to do this, and air
Speaker 1: cooled is probably the most basic method of doing it. Typically,
Speaker 1: the engine casing has some fins that emerge from it.
Speaker 1: These fins create a lot of surface area, so heat
Speaker 1: moves from the engine out towards the fins, and then
Speaker 1: air passes over those fins, and as the air passes
Speaker 1: over it starts to take away some of that heat,
Speaker 1: allowing the heat to dissipate. Most of your heat is
Speaker 1: actually lost through exhaust, not through the fins, but the
Speaker 1: fins do provide additional means to dissipate heat from the engine. Now,
Speaker 1: this works pretty well for smaller engines uh and it
Speaker 1: can even work in larger engines if those are vehicles
Speaker 1: that are being operated in cold climates. So let's say
Speaker 1: that you add a really big snowplow, Well, you might
Speaker 1: have an engine that's air cooled, because presumably you're only
Speaker 1: operating the snow plow when it's cold, when it's snowed.
Speaker 1: Lots of motorcycles used this type of engine cooling method,
Speaker 1: though more and more are moving more towards you know,
Speaker 1: liquid cooling mechanisms as a port posed to air cooling anyway.
Speaker 1: The engine for the Type one Volkswagens, the original version,
Speaker 1: was an eleven hundred c C engine. Now c C
Speaker 1: stands for cubic centimeter and it describes the volume or
Speaker 1: capacity of an engine. It's also sometimes called engine displacement
Speaker 1: because it specifically is referring to the volume of space
Speaker 1: that the pistons within the cylinders are displacing, and you
Speaker 1: measure it by going from the top dead center as
Speaker 1: in the furthest out a piston gets from the interior
Speaker 1: of its cylinder to the bottom dead center, the full
Speaker 1: extent of the piston extending down into the cylinder, and
Speaker 1: that tells you the volume of your engine. And you
Speaker 1: also have to do that with all the cylinders, like
Speaker 1: you have to you have to add up all the
Speaker 1: cylinders together to get the full volume. So that would
Speaker 1: mean that the Volkswagen Type one that with the original
Speaker 1: engine would have cylinders that each had displacement of two
Speaker 1: hundred seventy five cubic centimeters because it had four cylinders
Speaker 1: and four times to seventy five eleven hundred. Now, we
Speaker 1: in the United States often refer to engine displacement in
Speaker 1: leaders as opposed to cubic centimeters. So how does that translate. Well, roughly,
Speaker 1: you can say that a one thousand cc engine is
Speaker 1: one leader, So in this case, you could say an
Speaker 1: eleven hundred cc engine would be equivalent to a one
Speaker 1: point one leader engine. Engine capacity plays a role in
Speaker 1: an engine's outputs, such as torque, power, and mileage. Generally speaking,
Speaker 1: the power output of an engine is directly proportional to
Speaker 1: its engine capacity or volume. But the bigger volume, the
Speaker 1: more fuel the engine will burn through in a given
Speaker 1: amount of time. So mileage tends to suffer as engine
Speaker 1: volume increases. It's a bit of a balance, and there
Speaker 1: are different technologies that help mitigate that in different ways.
Speaker 1: But again that's another episode. So the Volkswagen Beetles engine,
Speaker 1: the original version wasn't much of a powerhouse, but the
Speaker 1: car itself was small and UH didn't need a whole
Speaker 1: lot of power to to have it put around. The
Speaker 1: original version was a twenty five horsepower engine, and horse
Speaker 1: power is a measurement of the rate at which work
Speaker 1: is done. UH it compares the amount of work and
Speaker 1: engine is capable of doing against the amount of work
Speaker 1: a typical draft horse could do. Have to do a
Speaker 1: full episode to explain stuff like horsepower at some point too,
Speaker 1: I suppose. But the engine's output could push the original
Speaker 1: Beetle up to a top speed of around a hundred
Speaker 1: kilometers per hour, which was one of Hitler's goals, and
Speaker 1: that's about sixty two miles per hour. It would take
Speaker 1: about half a minute to accelerate from a full stop
Speaker 1: to top speed, so it wasn't exactly a speed demon now.
Speaker 1: As I've mentioned earlier, the Beatles engine mounting was in
Speaker 1: the rear of the vehicle, not the front where you
Speaker 1: would find it in most cars. The Beetle was a
Speaker 1: rear wheel drive vehicle as well, so that means the
Speaker 1: back two wheels were the ones getting power. They're actually
Speaker 1: getting rotational force. The engine provided the force needed to
Speaker 1: turn those back wheels of the car, and the front
Speaker 1: of the car, where the engine would be in most vehicles,
Speaker 1: was used to store luggage. That was what would normally
Speaker 1: be the trunk or boot of a standard car. There
Speaker 1: was also a small area for luggage and other stuff
Speaker 1: behind the back seat in the in the car, not
Speaker 1: a whole lot of space, but a little bit. The
Speaker 1: original Beetle was also called the split screen Beetle because
Speaker 1: the rear windshield of these original Beetles that rolled off
Speaker 1: the assembly line back in nineteen were actually two panel
Speaker 1: that were split by the windshield frame itself, so you
Speaker 1: had a little, you know, strip of metal right down
Speaker 1: the middle of the windshield holding these two frames in place.
Speaker 1: After nineteen fifty three, the company ditched the split backwind
Speaker 1: shield design, and the cars from nineteen fifty three to
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty six had an oval shaped wind shield, and
Speaker 1: then the ones after nineteen fifty six went to a
Speaker 1: larger rectangular windshield for the back. That became the standard
Speaker 1: from that point moving forward. There were several variations of
Speaker 1: the Volkswagen Type one. One of them didn't see much
Speaker 1: widespread use, but it was a necessity during wartime, and
Speaker 1: that was a wood burning Volkswagen. It's a type of
Speaker 1: producer gas car. This type of car would use wood
Speaker 1: and would heat the wood up to very high temperatures
Speaker 1: like around fourteen hundred degrees celsius or two thousand, five
Speaker 1: hundred fifty degrees fahrenheit. And at that temperature, the wood
Speaker 1: decomposes to a combustible gas. That combustible gas would be
Speaker 1: fed into the car's cylinders much like a conventional petrol
Speaker 1: type of fuel would be, and it would then ignite
Speaker 1: and create the explosions, and so you would still have
Speaker 1: an internal combustion engine, but instead of running on gasoline
Speaker 1: or petrol, you were using you know, gasified wood. Cars
Speaker 1: with these engines had large gasification units attached them, typically
Speaker 1: to the back of the vehicle, sometimes even trailing behind
Speaker 1: in its own little trailer, and there was usually a
Speaker 1: pipe that was running from the gasification unit over the
Speaker 1: length of the vehicle, feeding into the car's engine. Uh.
Speaker 1: They look a little odd, to say the least. After
Speaker 1: the war, when gasoline became available, these things pretty much vanished. Now,
Speaker 1: in the case of the Volkswagen Beetle, they didn't have
Speaker 1: to have a pipe run the entire length of the
Speaker 1: car because again the engine was in the back. So
Speaker 1: mounting a gasification chamber on the back of the vehicle
Speaker 1: just meant that you could supply the gas directly to
Speaker 1: the engine without having to run a pipe through the
Speaker 1: length of the vehicle. More conventional variations on the Beetle
Speaker 1: included the Beatle Cabriolet, which was a convertible. Beetle had
Speaker 1: a soft top uh and numerous other tweaks to the design.
Speaker 1: It wasn't just that it had a soft top as
Speaker 1: opposed to the hard top Beatles. There were other differences
Speaker 1: as well. But before introducing the Beetle to the American market,
Speaker 1: Volkswagen began to install heftier engines that provided a bit
Speaker 1: more oomph. So Beatles would come in engine sizes that
Speaker 1: range from the original eleven hundred ccs up to sixteen
Speaker 1: hundred ccs also known as one point six Leaders. In
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty eight, an American advertising agency called Doyle dan
Speaker 1: burn Bach launched an ad campaign for the Volkswagen Beetle,
Speaker 1: and it was called Think Small and The ad featured
Speaker 1: a mostly blank page with a small photograph of a
Speaker 1: VW Beetle in it. At the base of the page
Speaker 1: was a short rundown of the car's features, worded in
Speaker 1: a way that was a bit self deprecating and humorous.
Speaker 1: It became one of the most successful ad campaigns of
Speaker 1: the twentieth century. A decade later, Disnety release that movie
Speaker 1: I was talking about earlier Herbie the love Bug. In
Speaker 1: that comedy, a race car driver discovers that a nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty three Volkswagen Beetle has its own personality and a
Speaker 1: mind of its own. And it's a cute little movie,
Speaker 1: and it spawned several sequels, and it also helped boost
Speaker 1: the Beatles profile. That year marked when the U S
Speaker 1: would become the home fortent of the Volkswagen Beetles produced
Speaker 1: by the company. In ninety two, the Beatle overtook the
Speaker 1: venerable Model t Ford to become the best selling car
Speaker 1: of all time. Uh it no longer holds that title
Speaker 1: as I understand it, but it did at one point.
Speaker 1: The Volkswagen Beetle remained in production until nine seventy nine
Speaker 1: in Germany, which is pretty darn phenomenal. It would be
Speaker 1: continued to be produced in Mexico. Part of the reason
Speaker 1: why the Beetle was discontinued was that over time, emissions
Speaker 1: standards were getting more restrictive in various parts of the world,
Speaker 1: and the Beatle performance just didn't meet up to those standards.
Speaker 1: But in Mexico those restrictions did not uh evolve quite
Speaker 1: as quickly, and so for a much longer time it
Speaker 1: was being produced out of Mexico. So for a while,
Speaker 1: if you were determined to get a Volkswagen Beetle, you
Speaker 1: could still get one, even after nineteen seventy nine. You
Speaker 1: could get a new one. Even after nineteen seventy nine,
Speaker 1: it would just be one that was produced in Mexico
Speaker 1: as opposed to in Germany. Anyway, there were changes over
Speaker 1: the course of the entire run of the Volkswagen Beetle
Speaker 1: from nine to nineteen seventy nine, but overall it stayed
Speaker 1: pretty consistent. Now and then next episode, we're going to
Speaker 1: talk about some of the other vehicles that Volkswagen produced
Speaker 1: throughout its history, and we'll also look at the New Beatle,
Speaker 1: which is no longer new, but it was so called
Speaker 1: the New Beatle when when debuted, as well as the
Speaker 1: VW Beetle final Edition. So that's a bit of foreshadowing,
Speaker 1: and also the controversy surrounding that in missions scandal that
Speaker 1: I mentioned at the top of this episode, not to
Speaker 1: mention other elements that play into Volkswagen's history. Not all
Speaker 1: of it is happy and not all of it is positive,
Speaker 1: but it's all fascinating stuff. So that wraps up this
Speaker 1: first episode about Volkswagen. I hope you guys enjoyed it.
Speaker 1: If you have any suggestions or requests or comments or anything,
Speaker 1: you can reach out to me on social media. The
Speaker 1: handle for our podcast on both Twitter and Facebook is
Speaker 1: text Stuff hs W and I'll talk to you again
Speaker 1: really soon. Text Stuff is a production of I heart
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