The hyper-efficient Volkswagen L1 gets 100 miles on a liter of gas - more than 200 miles per gallon.

Imagine driving from New York to Los Angeles on a tank of gas.

Volkswagen’s bullet-like L1 concept vehicle could come close to pulling that off.  What a senior VW official calls, “a technology driver,” has accomplished the seemingly impossible: going 100 kilometers (62.5 miles) on a single liter of petrol.  If you’d prefer to avoid the math, that works out to more than 236 miles per gallon.

The goal of the L1 was to serve as “a spearhead of technical innovation,” according to Dr. Ulrich Hackenberg, the German maker’s technology director, testing out “visionary concepts” that might one day find a role in more conventional vehicles.

“The question we asked ourselves,” said Hackenberg, “is whether we would be able to design a 1-liter car (a vehicle using just 1 liter of fuel to go 100 km) that is also affordable.”

To achieve maximum efficiency, VW adopted an unusual, tandem 2-seat design, with a gullwing-like door providing access to the cabin.

For now, it seems, the answer is no, and even if the technology on the L1 would be within reach of the typical consumer, it’s unlikely many motorists would accept the trade-offs.  Barely knee-high, the concept uses an unusual tandem seating arrangement for its two passengers.  To get into the high-tech interior, one opens a gull-wing style canopy.

VW had to re-think every aspect of automotive design to pull off its goal.  The long, narrow, tube-like design is unusually aerodynamic, for one thing, with a drag coefficient nearly as good as a supersonic fighter jet.  Things that normally create drag, have been eliminated.  Instead of rearview mirrors, for example, L1 uses tiny, side-mounted cameras, whose images are displayed on small LCD displays on the instrument panel.

The high-tech interior features video displays for rear-facing cameras that replace drag-inducing outside mirrors.

The Volkswagen L1 makes use of special, low-friction tires, and virtually all the conventional passenger components have been replaced by parts requiring far less energy to operate.

The engine, meanwhile, is a hyper-efficient, 2-cylinder diesel mated to a hybrid-electric drive system.  It can go about 7 miles in pure battery mode.

Weight is one of the big enemies of fuel efficiency, so L1 replaces conventional steel and even aluminum, where possible, with ultra-light carbon fiber-reinforced plastic.  The entire vehicle comes in at about 836 pounds, minus passengers.

While the Volkswagen L1 concept is unlikely to ever reach a VW showroom, Hackenberg said he’s hoping some of the technology used in the project will help improve the efficiency of more conventional vehicles, in the not-too-distant future.