Volkswagen Demonstrates Commitment to New Era of Sustainable Mobility with Unorthodox Website

To promote its all-electric SUV, Volkswagen has launched an automotive website unlike any other.

Every social post, website and video you click on adds to the global demand for energy, and as a result, increases carbon emissions.* In fact, the internet alone accounts for ~4% of global CO2 emissions, which is as much as the airline industry.†

To introduce the first model in its innovative ID. Family of Electric Vehicles, and to demonstrate its commitment to a new era of sustainable mobility, Volkswagen did something completely unorthodox. It removed all its vehicle photographs and designed a site with nothing but ASCII text (over 1.5 million characters) to create the illusion of car images.

The result? A browsing experience with a cleaner carbon footprint compared to 99% of the two million pages tested by Website Carbon (the digital carbon emissions calculator) who conducted a full manual assessment of every page to verify the results. The site produces an average of only 0.022 grams of CO2 per page view, compared to the average website which produces 1.76 grams of CO2 per page view.‡

Volkswagen’s ‘Carbon-Neutral Net’ is live now and being supported through social, search and CRM through the early spring.