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.

The post Four Important Takeaways from VW’s AGM appeared first on VWVortex.

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Waterfest Moves to Atco Dragway

Waterfest 24 will be held at Atco Dragway, in Atco, New Jersey. The summer event will take place at its new venue on July 21 and 22. Long held in Englishtown, New Jersey, the festival has been such a large part of the VW scene that the latest iteration of the Golf even comes with optional “Englishtown” wheels . The new venue, however, is an NHRA drag track a scant 52 miles southwest of Englishtown. The ¼ mile drag track opened in 1960, which makes it the oldest drag strip in New Jersey. The announcement came today on a social media post that announced the new location. Waterfest is North America’s largest VW/Audi show. As many 20,000 people show up for the annual show, making the second largest show in the world—with Worthersee being number one. 2018 will be Waterfest’s 24 th year in existence. The post Waterfest Moves to Atco Dragway appeared first on VWVortex . from VWVortex http://ift.tt/2GQjkuc via IFTTT

Macau Gets Messy with 16-Car Pileup

The Macau Grand Prix is always good for an accident or two or 16— you may remember Audi’s race ending crash last year —and this year’s event didn’t disappoint. It didn’t take long for things to get messy on the tight road circuit. On the opening lap of the qualifying race a 16-car pileup caused the race to be suspended. Things kicked off when Daniel Juncadella hit a wall on the exit of Police bend, one of the tightest parts of the already tight circuit. The following car of Raffaele Marciello was able to avoid the carnage, but Laurens Vanthoor, who was in the upside-down Audi that ended the race last year, could not avoid Juncadella and together they blocked up the road pretty much completely. “I couldn’t see him [Juncadella] at first. Then I saw the car standing still,” Vanthoor told Motorsport. “I tried to brake but it was just understeering and I couldn’t do anything. There’s room for one car there and you’re blind.” Fourteen more cars would eventually crash into the corner c

The First of its Kind: Integrated Engineering Releases Highly-Anticipated IE450T MK6 Golf R Turbo Kit

After two long years of development, the team at Integrated Engineering has finally announced the release of their IE450T kit for the MK6 Golf R. With their turbo kit bolted on right out of the box, the sport AWD hatch is transformed into a 450bhp monster, with hardly any noticeable increase in spool time. In fact, 435 ft-lbs of torque are achieved at all four wheels, at a mere 3300rpm! By now you are probably asking yourself how this is even possible on a 2.0L engine that made nearly half that power from the factory. By employing true twin-scroll technology into the cast turbo manifold and pairing it with a state-of-the-art BorgWarner EFR turbocharger, IE was able to keep spool time at a minimum and bring the fastest-spooling big turbo setup to the market. “We wanted to offer a kit that would dramatically increase the power output without making the car lose its amazing street-friendly drivability,” mentioned one of the IE engineers. We are told the IE450T leaves the car driving jus

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