Volkswagen adjusts their electric forecast upwards

Volkswagen is significantly raising its forecast for the production of electric vehicles: According to new plans, the strategic target of one million electric cars is to be reached by the end of 2023, two years earlier than previously planned. The Volkswagen company adjusted their plans to produce 1.5 million electric cars in 2025.

The company marked the entry to the new year with an increasingly electric focus: a total of 66 billion euros are to be invested across the company’s various subsidiaries by 2024. 11 billion euros will go to the Volkswagen brand itself, which will be launching their first electric vehicle, the ID.3 this summer. Next to their subsidiary Electrify America, which was founded to pay for Volkswagen’s involvement in the Dieselgate scandal, the company will be investing in charging infrastructure through their subsidiary Elli, aiming for a total of 36,000 across Europe by 2025.

VW will also open their MEB platform to third party manufacturers, as was previously announced. Ford, as their first customer, plans to launch an MEB based electric vehicle in Europe in 2023. They aim to sell more than 600,000 of the cars within six years.

As another celebratory milestone before the new decade, the VW brand delivered its 250,000th electrified vehicle since the introduction of the e-up in 2013 in mid-December. The best seller was the e-Golf with 104,000 deliveries, followed by the Golf GTE (51,000), Passat Variant GTE (42,000) and e-up (21,000). Jürgen Stackmann, Board Member for Sales, Marketing and After Sales, announced the milestone: “With the 250,000th electrified vehicle, the Volkswagen brand has reached a major milestone on the way to carbon-neutral mobility. Especially all-electric vehicles such as our new ID. family are the answer to major challenges of our times.”

Volkswagen Saxony is also massively expanding its charging infrastructure for electric vehicles at its three locations in Zwickau, Dresden and Chemnitz. In Zwickau, the 200th charging point of all three Saxon plants has now been put into operation. By the end of 2020 the number is expected to double to more than 400 charging points.

In a further technological innovation, Volkswagen presented the concept of a mobile charging robot for electric cars. The concept consists of a compact, autonomous robot and flexibly movable energy storage devices, so-called battery wagons. When fully charged, these have an energy content of around 25 kWh each. On demand via app or car-to-x communication, it brings an energy storage device to the electric vehicle and connects it independently. Then the robot collects another battery and moves on to other parked vehicles. The battery car with integrated charging electronics enables DC fast charging with up to 50 kW. Designed for underground or multi-story car parking spaces, the charger is not yet planned for serial production, but this may change quickly. As Mark Möller, VW’s head of development stated: “It’s a visionary prototype, which can be made into reality quite quickly, if the general conditions are right.” The biggest potential impact here is the savings in infrastructure installation and relatively simple installation process.