Germany's big automaker Volkswagen said it is planning to make a curiously designed car that will use just one liter (a quarter of a gallon) of fuel per 100 kilometer (62 miles).
"We want to put 'one-liter car' on the market by 2010," the group's supervisory board chairman, Ferdinand Piech, told the German daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung at Frankfurt's' International Auto Show.
The flat vehicle -- in which the passenger will sit behind the driver, like on a motorbike, is designed to be snug and extremely light. he rear-wheel drive car containing a one-cylinder diesel engine is slated to be part of a new series of small cars Volkswagen wants to launch in coming years under the name "New Small Family", according to the newspaper.
Piech said production costs of the fuel-efficient car have dropped nearly 85%, to around 5,000 euros each, since the concept was first unveiled five years ago.
Copyright Agence France-Presse, 2007
