Status: 10/27/2022 11:56 am
By 2026, the Wolfsburg-based automotive group Volkswagen wants to bring ten new electric car models onto the market. The entry-level car should then be available for less than 25,000 euros.
The market for electric cars in Europe and Germany continues to boom. Volkswagen has now announced that it will launch ten new electric car models by 2026. The portfolio should range from “entry-level e-cars with a target price of less than 25,000 euros to the ID.Buzz and the new flagship ID.Aero” in order to have a suitable offer in every segment. “In the future we will concentrate on our core models and will noticeably simplify our model range and packaging over the next ten years,” said VW core brand boss Thomas Schäfer.
The DAX group is also under pressure from the American electric car manufacturer Tesla. From January to September, the US group relegated Volkswagen to second place in sales of electric cars in Germany. Tesla sold more than 38,400 cars, while Volkswagen only sold just over 32,300 electric cars. For the US group, this corresponded to growth of 48 percent, while Volkswagen lost 40 percent compared to the same period last year.
The electrification of the fleet should now progress faster than planned: Volkswagen intends to only build electric cars in Europe by “2033 at the latest”. Volkswagen had previously stated that the VW brand would “sell the last vehicle with a combustion engine between 2033 and 2035”.
VW withdraws from robot start-up
Volkswagen, meanwhile, is changing its partner in robotic cars and withdrawing from a start-up held with Ford. The Wolfsburg-based group announced yesterday that it would no longer invest in Argo AI. Volkswagen and Ford each held 40 percent of the US company Argo, which was pursuing ambitious plans for self-driving vehicles.
VW intends to present a new partner for its self-driving shuttles previously planned with Argo, which are still to be launched via the mobility subsidiary Moia in Hamburg in 2025, but the company has not yet named them. Volkswagen entered the then Ford subsidiary in 2019 with an investment of over 2.6 billion US dollars.
The participation had been engineered by the then Volkswagen boss Herbert Diess. They wanted to share the costs for new developments with Ford. Both hoped to make faster progress in autonomous driving. The new Volkswagen boss Oliver Blume has now cashed in on the high-flying plans. Apparently he’s more cautious. The development of technology for autonomous driving is expensive and also considered risky because the prospects of success, including possible future profits, are unclear. Argo as a company should now be history.
Other collaborations unchanged
“All other cooperations with Ford remain unchanged,” said the group. Volkswagen is supplying the second-largest US automaker with the self-developed MEB electric platform for the European market. The US group has converted its Cologne Ford plant into a European center for electric cars at a cost of billions. The cooperation between the two car heavyweights was once considered the starting point for further cooperation.
Because of the exit from the Argo AI joint venture, the American carmaker Ford had to accept a net loss in the past quarter. The second-largest US automaker wrote off $2.7 billion on the project, resulting in a net loss of $827 million in the third quarter. Argo is now being wound up, Ford explained. “Talent engineers” should be offered positions at the parent company. Volkswagen also said it expects to hire some Argo employees.