I.D. Buzz Cargo Still Has a Chance in America

Volkswagen showed off the I.D. Buzz Cargo at the LA Auto Show yesterday, and it turns out there’s still a chance it could make it in America.

Despite specifically indicating that the Buzz Cargo would be ready for Europe in a press release, VW CEO Scott Keogh said at VW’s press conference that the company is “taking a very close look at it [for the US market].”

Although he didn’t detail what it would take for the I.D. Buzz Cargo to start selling it in the US, Keogh’s speech provided a hint as to what the company thinks is the Cargo’s use case.

Focusing heavily on deliveries (rather than repairs, as in the European press release), Keogh outlined the advantages of an electric delivery van in a world where free two-day shipping means that delivery vehicles are becoming a bigger and bigger environmental threat.

What logistics companies call the “last mile” is the crucial final step in delivering products where efficiency takes a nose dive. Whereas you can stuff a bunch of products into a big ship or truck, getting parcels from the distribution center to your door in two days means delivering packages a few at a time, which is responsible for lots of traffic and lots carbon emissions.

So a, say, electric delivery vehicle sold en masse to make—oh, I dunno—a fleet for some kind of—what you call them?—online retailer like (for the sake of argument) Amazon might be a good, as they say, “get” for Volkswagen.

And I don’t just bring up Amazon because it’s the biggest. Audi is already working with the company to install chargers in e-tron Quattro owners’ homes.

But that’s all speculative, and VW is still just looking closely. The I.D. Buzz Cargo could be ready for European deliveries as soon as 2022. No American timeline is available.

The post I.D. Buzz Cargo Still Has a Chance in America appeared first on VWVortex.

from VWVortex https://ift.tt/2TYz3Og
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