A technician repairs a Volkswagen badge on the assembly line of a Volkswagen electric ID for the German automaker. 3 times in Dresden, Germany, June 8, 2021.
Matthias Reichel | Reuters
Volkswagen said Tuesday that several of its battery-powered models, including the Porsche Taycan, are already sold for 2022 and that high consumer demand is helping to make electric vehicle efforts profitable as its internal combustion lineup more quickly than expected.
Volkswagen has been working for several years on a bold plan to transition to electric vehicles, with the goal of making electric vehicles responsible for half of its global production by 2030. While the plan is not expected to reach its full stride until the middle of this decade, it is already paying off. Volkswagen was the leading seller of electric cars in Europe, with about 25% of the market. In the US, it was second only to Tesla, with a share of 7.5% last year.
Volkswagen’s share of the electric car market in China is still relatively small, but it is growing rapidly. Shipments of the country’s electric group jumped fourfold last year to nearly 93,000, and Volkswagen expects that total to double again in 2022.
“We’re seeing better volume, we’re seeing better margins, and we’re seeing higher customer demand,” chief financial officer Arno Antlitz told reporters during a call ahead of the company’s annual meeting on Tuesday. “Originally we thought it would take two to three years to see [profit] Equivalence of ICE and Battery Electric Vehicles”.
Part of that “best measure” comes from rival Ford Motor Company. Both Ford and VW announced on Monday that there will now be two electric vehicles based on the Volkswagen EV for the European market, and production of the pair is expected to reach about 1.2 million vehicles over six years starting in 2023. That’s double what was planned. Originally .
Volkswagen and Ford have been collaborating on electric cars, autonomous driving and other big initiatives since 2019.
In a separate update to investors ahead of its annual meeting, Volkswagen said its next-generation EV platform is on track for launch in 2026 with a new VW-branded electric sedan codenamed Trinity.
The Trinity sedan will be built at a new, state-of-the-art plant adjacent to the campus of Volkswagen’s headquarters in Wolfsburg, Germany. The new facility will use advanced production methods and serve as a blueprint for the gradual conversion of Volkswagen plants worldwide to electric vehicle production.
The company revealed its identity last week. Buzz vehicle, an electric version of the popular microbus in the hippie era.
VW is also expanding its global freight network. The company said it has a total of about 10,000 high-speed charging points operating in the US, China and Europe and plans to increase that total to about 45,000 across the three regions by 2025. About 10,000 of those will be in the US, it said, operating under the Electrify America brand which It was created as part of Volkswagen’s dieseljet settlement.
Volkswagen currently expects its total deliveries, including internal combustion models, to increase by between 5% and 10% in 2022. But CEO Herbert Diess acknowledged that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine could lead it to change that guidance. He said the company is moving some of its production from Europe to North America and China in response to war-related supply chain disruptions.