VW Will Start Throwing its Weight Around to Beat Tesla

With automakers rushing into the EV market like Forty-niners, they inevitably look towards Tesla. Volkswagen is no exception, and now Herbert Diess, VW’s CEO, says that VW will be able to “stop” the current EV-leader because it has “abilities Tesla doesn’t have.”

Those abilities, for the record, are global scale and manufacturing expertise, which Diess describes as unmatched. And as the world’s largest automaker, there’s at least some credence to his argument.

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Using that scale and manufacturing expertise, Diess not only hopes that VW will overtake Tesla, he intends for the people’s car to become the world’s leading EV maker.

To do that, they will need affordable cars. That will look like the I.D. concept, expected to arrive in 2019 or 2020.

Things look good for that car’s progress, too. Automotive News reports that the final design for the production version of the I.D. hatchback has been approved.

Apparently dubbed the Neo, VW’s first MEB-based car will cost roughly the same amount as the Golf TDI it hopes eventually to replace.

neo

The I.D. will eventually be followed by a flurry of vehicles based on the same platform, including the Crozz, the Lounge (a large SUV designed to appeal to Americans), the Aero-e (a “sporty” four-door sedan), and the Buzz.

That’s not to say, though, that Diess is taking this lightly.

“We have to be careful,” he told Automotive News, “because we have a lot of work in front of us and the challenges that lie ahead are enormous.”

[source: Automotive News]

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