VW sees electric vehicle demand in Europe and China help beat their 1 million EV/year goal

Strong regulations to encourage electric vehicle adoption in Europe and China are expected to have a major impact on the auto industry in the next few years.

VW thinks it will create enough electric vehicle demand to help them beat their goal to make 1 million electric vehicles per year by 2025.

Christian Senger, head of electric mobility at the Volkswagen (VW) brand, said in an interview via Reuters:

“One could argue that we will well exceed the 1 million (target) from the MEB,”

MEB is Volkswagen’s latest platform to support new electric vehicles built to be electric from the ground up.

The German automaker is planning several new vehicles starting with the mass-market I.D. electric car in 2020.

They are looking ahead years after the release of their first MEB electric vehicle and they see demand being even greater than originally anticipated.

“In the cycle plan where we again and again undertake forward planning for up to 15 years, we see that the markets even want more (electric) cars than we have earmarked.”

Senger added:

“We are looking at growth rates here that we have in no other product. Demand is always volatile, but the indicators we have show that it (beating the 1 million goal) can work.”

By 2025, they hope the production plan will lead to 3 million electric vehicles per year between all their brands (VW, Audi, Porsche, etc.).

The group has secured electric vehicle battery contracts valued at up to $48 billion in order to support the production of all those vehicles.

Electrek’s Take

While it’s encouraging that VW, a major automaker, is seeing demand for electric vehicle increase rapidly, I’d just really wish VW would stop talking about EVs and start making them.

The e-Golf is almost impossible to get in most markets and they unveiled 4 different EV concepts without bringing them to production yet.

The only reason I am cutting them some slack is that there’s actually evidence that they are making significant investments into EV production to start delivering in volume, which is not always the case with legacy automakers.

As for the Volkswagen group, we should at least start seeing the Audi e-tron quattro this year and Electrify America, a VW subsidiary, is starting to build up its EV charging network in the US.

So while they are mostly still ‘talk’ when it comes to electrification, it’s not ‘all talk’.