Skip to main content

Volkswagen’s Not Ruling Out an Electric Tie-up With Ford

The partnership announced between Ford and Volkswagen back in June has the potential to birth a number of outcomes — from jointly developed commercial vehicles (the initial aim), to badge-swapped overseas small cars, autonomous vehicle hardware, and perhaps even borrowed electric vehicle architecture.

As it prepares the launch of its MEB-platform electric vehicles, Volkswagen’s not saying “no” to letting Ford have a piece of the action.

Of course, it’s not saying “yes” either. Speaking on a conference call this week, Volkswagen chief financial officer Frank Whitter said the company is open to new hookups, Automotive News reports, but wouldn’t say whether or not its MEB architecture would ever be up for grabs.

“Whether we might provide access to other brands outside of the VW Group is theoretically possible, but there is no decision,” Whitter said.

Having access to VW’s EV architecture would be a cost-saving boon for Ford, which begins its electric product push with the release of a sporty crossover in 2020. At this year’s Detroit auto show, Ford announced plans to release 40 electrified models by 2022, 16 of which would be fully electric. To do this, the automaker will spend $11-billion.

VW’s first MEB vehicle, a compact hatchback, starts production in November 2019. Following that, a crossover and reborn Microbus appear, with production eventually leaving Germany for the U.S. and China. Those latter two models likely have a home in Tennessee.

All told, VW aims to build 10 million electric vehicles using its new architecture. One of the brand’s main areas of focus is the Chinese EV market — a cash-rich cornucopia of state-incentivized green vehicle buyers. It’s a market Ford, which saw its Chinese operations hit a towering roadblock in recent months, would definitely like a larger slice of.

Platforms aside, Whitter said VW is eagerly looking to lower future costs by partnering with big players in the autonomous driving field.

“It’s no secret that this is very expensive to develop and that there is the one or the other that is far ahead, such as Waymo in the U.S., so we are naturally thinking about how we can narrow the lead. Or if this isn’t feasible, how we can strengthen our own activities,” Whitter said. “There’s no final decision.”

a version of this article first appeared on thetruthaboutcars.com

The post Volkswagen’s Not Ruling Out an Electric Tie-up With Ford appeared first on VWVortex.



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

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

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...
Post a Comment
Read more

Bugatti Chiron Won’t Get a Roadster Version

The all-new Bugatti Chiron hypercar will not get a convertible version like its Veyron predecessor did. Speaking to Autocar at the London grand opening of the sole Bugatti showroom in the U.K., marketing boss Stefan Brungs confirmed that the French automaker’s latest hypercar will only be sold in coupe format, with “no roadster or convertible” version in the plans. Brungs also said that the company is only planning on selling the allotted 500 Chirons as standard, so faster variants like a Super Sports version also aren’t likely. This is a very different strategy than the Veyron, which has targa top Grand Sport and Super Sports models, as well as a number of special edition models. The Chiron is set to try to break the world record for fastest car and attempt to beat the Veyron’s record of 268 mph. It is believed that the Chiron will be able to hit 288 mph. Powered by an 8.0-liter W16 engine with 1,500 horsepower and 1,106 pound-feet of torque, it shouldn’t ...
Post a Comment
Read more

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...
2 comments
Read more