VW Expects EVs to Cost More Initially, Less Over Lifetime

The current path to sales for EVs is pretty clear. Make a luxury car, make it fast, charge a bunch of money for it, and you’ll do alright. At least, that’s how Tesla’s doing it.

The next frontier for electric vehicles, though, is volume sales. It’s not enough to prove that electric vehicles work for the upper crust, EVs have to prove that they work for regular people, too. Tesla is struggling slightly with that, failing to make enough Model 3s or enough money to really make a strong case for the EVs as a mainstream product.

Volkswagen, though, has a mighty industrial empire backing its attempt to make electric cars for the people, but even it believes that its electric cars will cost more than its combustion cars. Initially, at least.

The initial cost of ownership for the first generation of VW’s electric cars in America will be a little higher than comparable combustion cars, says Hinrich Woebcken, President of VW’s US operations. But VW is trying to make sure that the cost of ownership is low enough to make up for that.

“Demand on the volume side has a lot to do with [the customer’s] business case on cost of ownership [being] comparable to an internal combustion car. That’s what we are aiming for,” Woebcken told us at the New York International Auto Show.

In Europe, VW has promised that the I.D. line of cars will cost about as much as its diesel cars. Since VW’s commitment to EVs kind of came as a result of there being no more diesels in America, they can’t quite make that same promise here.

“Since we don’t have diesel here in the US market anymore we see a surcharge on cost of the vehicle, but then looking at total cost of ownership it has a certain trade offer,” he said. “That’s why we’re working on an offer for the customer that makes sense for the customer to really look at this as an alternative compared to a combustion engine car.”

Woebcken admits that this will be difficult for the first generation of cars since the investment has been so large and the market still so unsure, but he sees it as necessary.

“Only then, this technology, long term, has a volume opportunity,” he argues.

The post VW Expects EVs to Cost More Initially, Less Over Lifetime appeared first on VWVortex.

from VWVortex https://ift.tt/2GCAdw1
via IFTTT

Comments

Project SportWagen: Going Stage 2 with APR

When we last left you, the humble little SportWagen was fresh from the development process with our friends at AWE Tuning, sporting a new downpipe, exhaust and intake, allowing things to breathe a bit easier. The car sounded great, but there was no getting around the fact that our wagon was still quite, well, slow. While we realize that nothing we do to the Golf SportWagen at this point will make it a race car, we still felt compelled to do something . To put it bluntly, we had a fever, and the only cure was more power. Flash forward a few hours, and we found ourselves at Waterfest, staring down APR’s palatial spread and the numerous tuned vehicles surrounding it. Earlier in the year, APR had hinted to us that their 1.8 TSI files would be quite impressive, and based on what they were able to do with the 2.0 TSI found in the new GTI and our time in their Golf R, we knew it’d be worth the wait. So with this in mind, we lined our G...

Project Golf SportWagen- Intro

I’ve never really been one for SUVs and crossovers. The current offerings aren’t the body-on-frame, go-anywhere specialty tools I remember from my youth, and what they lack in capability, they also lack in on-road performance. The current crop isn’t terribly good at handling or being efficient, which in my opinion are major components of our ideal driving experience. So when it comes to space or utility, I usually look for something of the wagon variety- and it seems that I’m not alone. We hit quite a few shows around the east coast each summer, and we see modified Jetta SportWagens at nearly every event. Even amongst common consumers, these cars are highly sought-after. They don’t depreciate much, making even early Mk 5 2.5 versions expensive in comparison to other Jettas or Golfs of the same vintage. This year, Volkswagen launched their latest SportWagen, which is now billed as a Golf. In many ways, this latest SportWagen is the best yet and it has certai...

Volkswagen Group Records Best Ever First-Half-of-Year Sales

With 5.5 million vehicles in customer hands after the first six months of 2018, the Volkswagen Group is seeing the best performance of its history. Group deliveries increased significantly in all core regions,” said Fred Kappler, head of sales for the Group. “Our core brands recorded strong growth in the first half year.” For the year-to-date, all of Volkswagen’s brands had sales bumps. MAN, SEAT, and Skoda led the sales charge with performances 24%, 17% and 11% better than the previous year. The big sellers, too, had strong sales periods, with Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles, Audi, and Volkswagen sales rising 3.5%, 4.5% and 6.3% respectively. That last figure is particularly good new for the board, since Volkswagen alone sold more than 3 million vehicles in the first half of 2018. As Kappler stated, the numbers are equally good when you break sales down by region. Brazil and Russia were the most improved markets (22% and 20%, respectively), while strong sales in Europe and China (u...

Vorderman Volkswagen

Search This Blog