Matthias Müller took the helms of Volkswagen following the Dieselgate scandal and he quickly positioned the German automaker to push for electric cars, but he is now reportedly facing an internal backlash from the company’s leadership, which is not entirely sold on electric vehicles.
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Since announcing its plan to build 2 to 3 million electric cars a year and to unveil 30 new models by 2025 – across all its brands (VW, Audi, Porsche, etc.), Volkswagen has been rumored to be planning to build one or more giant battery factory to support this plan.
But the German automaker has yet to confirm any plan to build one, though they now admitted seeing a need for 40 Gigafactory-size battery factories for electric vehicles by 2025.
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Volkswagen’s research group displayed some of the new and cutting edge technologies that it has been working on recently – including some related to electric vehicles.
They unveiled their all-electric research car, which is capable of over 250 miles of range, a first for VW’s EVs, and new mobile charging robots are presented as a possible charging solution for the vehicle.
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While electric vehicle enthusiasts are tired of only seeing electric concepts coming out of VW, it looks like the German automaker is ready to back those concepts with a massive 9 billion euros ($10 billion) investment to bring them to production.
Volkswagen chief executive Matthias Müller conceded that “the future of driving is electric” and they plan to be part of it, but they are having trouble reconciling it with their current internal combustion engine business.
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Volkswagen CEO Herbert Diess confirmed that they are putting all their effort to ready their new MEB platform and launch their new electric vehicles in 2020 – just in time to comply with European and Chinese emission standards.
The German automaker’s leadership said that they will have to bring EVs to market in volumes in order to comply with those standards, which proves that strict emission standards can encourage automakers to invest heavily in electric vehicle production.
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As part of its court settlement with the California Air Resources Board (CARB) and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for the DieselGate scandal, Volkswagen agreed to invest $2 billion in electric vehicle infrastructure in the US.
They released highlights of their plan for how to spend that money last month, but now they released the first detailed version of the plan for California, where they need to spend $800 million of the total settlement. We embedded the full plan below, but we also highlight the main points, like the fact that they want to install high-power 320 kW charging stations for electric vehicles, which is probably the biggest news.
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As we recently reported, virtually all automakers are currently working on some form of driverless ride-sharing/taxi services. Whether it’s through investments in existing services, like GM with its acquisition and investment in Cruise Automation and Lyft respectively, or through direct development like Tesla with its Autopilot and ‘Tesla Network‘ programs.
Renault and Nissan recently unveiled their own effort and now it’s time for Volkswagen to step in with a new concept called “Sedric”.
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VW has presented the I.D. Concept as its first major entry in electric vehicles with an affordable long-range option to compete with the Tesla Model 3.
In a somewhat surprising move, the German automaker has allowed some media outlets to drive the wobbly show car they used to unveil the concept last year.
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As part of its court settlement with the California Air Resources Board (CARB) and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for the DieselGate scandal, Volkswagen agreed to invest $2 billion in electric vehicle infrastructure in the US.
The German automaker unveiled this week its plan for how to spend the money under a new subsidiary called Electrify America.
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Volkswagen has a lot riding on its new MEB platform – the Modular Electric Drive kit. The company’s plan to convert millions of vehicles production capacity to electric within the next 10 years depends on it.
The automaker first announced that its first all-electric vehicles using the platform will to come to market in 2020 and it now confirmed that the MEB platform will go in production into 2019.
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Volkswagen is among the very few major automakers who are committed to the mass production of electric vehicles. Undoubtedly pushed by the backlash of the ‘Dieselgate’ scandal, the German automaker invested heavily in its new MEB platform for electric vehicles last year and announced plans to build 2 to 3 million all-electric cars a year and unveil 30 new models by 2025.
The company has since unveiled a few concepts using the platform and they are now laying out their design direction for EVs in more details.
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After the ‘Dieselgate’ scandal, Volkswagen has come out as one of the major automakers most committed to electric cars. Earlier this year, the company announced its plan to build 2 to 3 million all-electric cars a year and to unveil 30 new models by 2025 – across all its brands (VW, Audi, Porsche, etc.).
Tesla is aiming for similar volumes and we all know what the company did in order to secure the battery supply to support that kind of electric car production; the Gigafactory. Earlier this year, an insider report came out saying that Volkswagen was about to present to its board of directors a project similar to Tesla’s Gigafactory and build a ‘multi-billion euro battery factory’, but Volkswagen CEO, Matthias Müller, later denied the plan.
VW’s management is apparently now more open to the idea of Volkswagen building its own battery factory following a restructuring of the company announced last week.
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For the past months, Volkswagen has been teasing its all-electric ‘I.D. concept’ ahead of the Paris Motors Show. First with a video teaser and followed by design sketches.
Now just a day before the press event in Paris, VW revealed the full design of the vehicle with a series of renders. It also released a few details and confirmed that they aim for a parallel production with the Golf in 2020.
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Two weeks ago, Volkswagen confirmed that it will unveil an all-electric concept car at the 2016 Paris Motor show next month and released a few teaser images. Now the German Automaker releases the design sketches of the model – revealing a few design features in the process.
When Volkswagen announced its plan to build 2 to 3 million all-electric cars a year and unveil 30 new models under its brands by 2025, we all thought of new VW, Audi or Porsche models, but now the German automaker announced a new model under its Volkswagen Commercial vehicle brand.
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Volkswagen is expected to explain in more details its impressive plan to build 2 to 3 million all-electric cars a year and unveil 30 new models by 2025. One of the first models will be unveiled at the 2016 Paris Motor show, which starts the first week of October, and VW released today a teaser for the vehicle.
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BMW and VW in partnership with ChargePoint, an electric charging station operator, announced that they completed the installation of 95 DC fast-charging stations in the US as part of a program launched last year.
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Back in May, we shared a report from German newspaper Handelsblatt, which has often produced reliable insider reports on the German auto industry, citing insider sources saying that Volkswagen was about to present to its board of directors a plan to build a ‘multi-billion euro battery factory’.
In a new interview with the same newspaper this week, VW CEO Matthias Müller denies plans for the giant electric vehicle battery factory.
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As part of its new plan to build 2 to 3 million all-electric cars a year and unveil 30 new models by 2025, Volkswagen announced that they plan to debut one of these 30 new electric car models at the Paris Motor show next month.
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Earlier this year – not long after the Dieselgate scandal – the Volkswagen Group announced a new direction for its lineup of vehicles with a plan to introduce 20 new electric vehicles through the group’s brands by the end of the decade.
Today, the automaker extended the timeline to 2025 and said that it will introduce “more than 30 new electric vehicles during the next 10 years”. Earlier this year, CEO Matthias Müller was talking about both all-electric and plug-in hybrids, but now he is making a statement to go all-electric and confirmed that the “more than 30 new models” will all be “purely battery-powered electric vehicles (BEVs)”.
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Tesla’s brand has significantly increased in value over the past year, especially since the Model 3 unveiling and the more than 373,000 reservations it received. On the other hand, Volkswagen’s brand took a big hit following the ‘Dieselgaste’ scandal, so much so that Tesla has now surpassed the company’s VW brand in “brand value”.
BrandZ published its annual report of the 100 most valuable brands and Tesla knocked VW out of the top 10 in the car category.
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German newspaper Handelsblatt, which has often produced reliable insider reports on the German auto industry, now cites insider sources saying that Volkswagen is about to present to its board of directors a plan to build a ‘multi-billion euro battery factory’.
The publication suggests that the plan is likely to be approved.
The battery cell supply chain is close to the number one priority of any automaker looking to manufacture electric vehicles in high volume. Ever since the ‘Dieselgate’ scandal, VW has been under pressure to introduce more electric vehicles to its lineup and earlier this year, it announced plans to introduce 20 new electric vehicles through the group’s brands by the end of the decade.
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There’s been some confusion about the imminent upgrade to Volkswagen’s all-electric e-Golf versus its next generation expected to be available by the end of the decade. Dr. Volkmar Tanneberger, Head of Electric Vehicle Development at VW, cleared up some of the confusion this weekend during a press meeting for the Formula E race in Berlin.
The executive confirmed that the 2017 e-Golf will receive a battery upgrade by the end of the year and that it will allow for an NEDC rated range of 300 km (186 miles) on a single charge.
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At the Beijing Auto Show today, Volkswagen unveiled the new electric SUV it was teasing in a press release last week. The new plug-in hybrid SUV is called the T-Prime concept and it appears to be VW’s answer to the success of Mitsubishi’s Outlander PHEV.
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