Four Important Takeaways from VW’s AGM

Please excuse the listicle headline, but sometimes the form is useful, as, for instance, in the case of Volkswagen’s new realignment. The complicated process of climbing out of the diesel scandal is full of meaningless jargon and business talk, which obfuscates as much as it clarifies.

Fortunately for us all, Volkswagen had their Annual General Meeting today, and CEO Matthias Muller went into further detail about the plan for Volkswagen’s future. The important takeaways are as follows:

30 Fully Electric Cars by 2025

As has been widely reported Volkswagen expects to have 30 electric vehicles on the market by 2025, and it hopes that these cars will account for 25% of the Group’s sales volume. That means that the Group will be selling 2 to 3 million electric vehicles per year in 10 years. “We are determined to make e-mobility a new hallmark of Volkswagen,” says Muller. This will not only get them in line with coming emissions standards in Europe, but will should also help them become leaders in green technology, which should help undo some of the damage of the diesel scandal. Volkswagen will therefore make battery technology a core focus in the coming years.

A Self Driving System in the Early 2020s

The new technologies continue to figure in Volkswagen’s plans. Autonomous driving will be one of VW’s central focuses. “Cumulative investment in new autonomous mobility solutions will amount to several billion euros,” says Muller. The group will be working on self-driving vehicles for both personal use and hauling.

VW Will Make its Components Business More Profitable

The components business is kind of the nut and bolts of automaking, and as a result is very important. Volkswagen’s parts supplying business is actually one of the world’s largest so making it run efficiently and effectively is very important. Muller says that a “realignment will give the compnenets business greater entrepreneurial freedom” and will lead to “transparency” and more “internal competition. While it’s still unclear exactly what that means, it sounds like Volkswagen will be making fewer top down decisions for its suppliers, allowing them to compete in a kind of free market, which should lower prices. This could also hint at a desire to design and make its own batteries, a subject in which VW has been showing a lot of interest.

VW Wants to Regain your Trust

Volkswagen is handing over the results of its internal investigation to the US law firm, Jones Day. For now, though, they are already planning on overhauling their own approval processes for emissions, and have created the “four eyes” principle, which seeks to create separation between development, approval, and quality assurance. All of which, Volkswagen hopes, will prove to buyers that Volkswagen is really committed to never letting another diesel scandal happen.

Of course, today’s AGM involved more than just these points, including the announcement of a particulate filter for gas engines that will reduce their emissions by up to 90%, but these were the major talking points of the shareholder meeting today. Ultimately, Volkswagen hopes that its new business plan, TOGETHER – Strategy 2025, will actually help them become even more profitable than they were before the scandal rocked the company.

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