Have you ever seen an electric vehicle inside a 320°F popcorn machine being tumbled around? The answer to that question is probably no. Yet amazingly, Volkswagen has done just that in one of the strangest tests we have ever seen.
Car companies love to push cars to the limits during testing. Crash tests are one way of doing that, but some manufacturers also put their cars through extreme climatic conditions to see how they perform. BYD, for example, froze one of its cars to showcase its charging capabilities in extreme cold.
Volkswagen’s China division has decided to take things to the opposite end of the spectrum. The company took the new ID. AURA T6, developed for the Chinese market, and decided to place the car in a giant popcorn machine that operates at 320°F, a massive temperature for anything to withstand.
Placing any car inside a machine operating at such a high temperature will have an impact. There was no way it wouldn’t do that. But Volkswagen wanted to show that, even after it had been cooked, this new electric car could still drive out and operate normally.
How Volkswagen Cooked the ID. AURA T6
Volkswagen China may well have seen what BYD had done with one of its EVs, and decided to go in the complete opposite direction. What better way to test a car in extreme hot weather than to place it into a huge popcorn machine? But don’t think that this is like the popcorn machines you see at the cinemas. This takes popcorn to a whole new level.
China isn’t afraid to go big, and it certainly did that with this machine. Regular machines in China are more like cannons, and the teardrop-shaped containers contain various grains that accumulate pressure when heated. Air will flow through the machine’s opening, which puffs up the grain, with the popcorn shooting outwards. So, in effect, the Volkswagen had become the grain, with this popcorn machine upgrade to accommodate an actual car.
The Volkswagen team loaded the car into the drum and then heated it. It was taken up to 320°F before the popcorn machine began to turn. The video of the test shows it didn’t take long for it to take effect. The glass began to crack quickly, thanks to the combined effects of the heat and the movement inside the machine. After being put through such an intense test, you would probably expect this Volkswagen to be at the end of its life. However, this particular EV had other ideas.
This Volkswagen Survived the Extreme Heat
By the end of the spinning test, the Volkswagen was looking a bit worse for wear. The windshield was destroyed, the roof had caved in, and the bodywork had taken a lot of damage as a whole. It reminded us of the extreme tests that Top Gear put a Toyota Hilux through many years ago. But the big question was, like with the Hilux, would the AURA T6 work when it was released from the machine?
Incredibly, it did. Volkswagen showed someone getting in the car and starting it up, before driving it out of the machine as if nothing had happened. Incredibly, this came after Volkswagen ran the car through the machine a couple more times, just to be sure it had taken as good a battering as possible. So if you are in China and want to buy a Volkswagen ID. AURA T6, it looks like you are going to have quite a tough car.