Skip to main content

Volkswagen Wants the World to Buy Like Americans

The world needs to adopt North America’s penchant for high-riding SUVs if Volkswagen has any hope of building a clean, green, safe future for your kids. That’s basically the message coming from the automaker, which wants 50 percent of its global product mix to be made up of crossovers and SUVs by 2025.

High-margin SUVs will bolster the brand’s business, the company says, helping bring in the cash needed to eventually take your internal combustion engine and steering wheel away.

It’s a similar product/planning strategy underway at BMW, which recently launched the massive X7 to help expand its line of electric cars. Judging by a flurry of model trademarks (X8, X9), Bimmer’s got other large, multi-cylinder vehicles on the way.

VW made its cargo-happy declaration at the overseas launch of the tiny T-Cross crossover, a Polo-based vehicle slotting below the T-Roc on the utility ladder.

“SUVs are becoming increasingly popular with our customers throughout the world,” said Jürgen Stackmann, the Volkswagen board member responsible for sales. “This is why we are consistently pursuing our current SUV offensive. It will be a key contribution to strengthening our core business so that we can invest the necessary billions of euros in mobility and autonomous driving. The T-Cross rounds off our SUV family in the rapidly growing small SUV market.”

The recent global launch of the larger, redesigned Tiguan led to boffo sales, while North American and Chinese customers now enjoy the identical three-row Atlas and Teramont, respectively. Europeans just received a new, range-topping Touareg. A new, smaller crossover is due in our market before too long, as is a sportier, two-row Atlas variant.

As it continues its SUV offensive on the global stage, the brand holds equally lofty expectations for its looming I.D. electric car line. VW hopes to sell 1 million EVs by 2025. The two product plans make for strange bedfellows, though they’re married by money. EVs aren’t known for their generous margins, and development costs are sky-high. Throwing a number of different-sized bodies onto the MQB platform will deliver the cash needed to get the I.D.s, later EVs, and futuristic self-driving vehicles off the ground, VW hopes.

In the U.S., utility vehicles made up 40.2 percent of Volkswagen’s September sales volume. Even the American market isn’t American enough for VW at this point.

a version of this article first appeared on thetruthaboutcars.com

The post Volkswagen Wants the World to Buy Like Americans appeared first on VWVortex.



from VWVortex https://ift.tt/2JhOn3L
via IFTTT
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Watch: The Story of the Ads that Made VW Big in America

The ads for the original Beetle are almost as famous and well-loved as the Beetle itself. Looking back now it’s easy to forget, though, just how easily things could have wrong. A new short from Dial M Films tracks the history of those early Volkswagen ads that sold America on the people’s car. The story, of course, begins with the visionary agency that made the ads: Doyle Dane Bernach (DDB). As a popular agency for Jewish products, no agency was more aware of the implications of Volkswagen, and no one, it seems, was more skeptical of the brand than DDB. “Remember Those Great Volkswagen Ads?” from Dial M Films on Vimeo . William Bernbach, though, was adament that the firm take the client, probably as a way of attracting other lucrative automotive clients. Saddled with a client that he didn’t want, art director Helmut Krone says in the film that he originally came up with ads that were all wrong. Krone tried to do what other manufacturers did and was intent on selling the Beetle ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Watch: The Stig Drives (nearly) Seven Generations of Golf GTI

With Volkswagen announcing “major” updates to the Golf, it seems an appropriate time to look back on what we’ve had so far. And who better to guide us through the rich history of the most popular European car ever made than Ben Collins, the former Stig? Some say he’s never met a GTI he doesn’t love, and that he can’t grow any of his own facial hair. All we know is … Ben Collins is actually a pretty solid presenter. Working his way through seven generations of the GTI (skipping over the Mk6) Collins tells us a little bit about each one and matches each mark to its corresponding facial hair craze. The Mk1 GTI for instance, is light and quick, but can lose traction under hard acceleration (in heavy rain). Despite that, Collins calls the Mk1 a “pure gem.” The Mk4, meanwhile, is a powerful return to form after the perhaps too sensible Mk3. Collins ends in the only way he could, with the Mk7, which accelerates faster than a Lamborghini Countach and is all kinds of wonderful. Watch, ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Volkswagen Golf GTE Wins Top Honor at the 2015 Business Techies Awards

Golf GTE wins Green category in the 2015 BusinessCar Fleet Technology awards Judges praised the Golf GTE for its performance, ease of use and economy Golf GTE launched earlier this year with plug-in hybrid technology – priced from £33,755 204 PS performance combined with CO 2  emissions of just 39 g/km Volkswagen has added to its growing list of 2015 automotive industry accolades by winning the Green category in the annual BusinessCar Fleet Technology Awards – the Techies. The prestigious title was awarded to Volkswagen for the Golf GTE, an innovative plug-in hybrid that combines sporty dynamics with exceptional fuel economy and low CO 2  emissions. Now in their seventh year, the Techies are judged by both BusinessCar’s experienced editorial panel with help from TRL’s technology expert. The industry’s only technology-specific awards, the BusinessCar Techies reward the use of technology to make business car fleet operations easier, cheaper, cleaner, safer and more straig...
Post a Comment
Read more