flower: “step after next”
VW is aiming for e-cars for 20,000 euros
05/14/2023, 11:25 am
The German carmaker Volkswagen wants to further reduce the price of VW brand e-cars. According to CEO Blume, the next goal should be a price of 20,000 euros. The small electric car ID.2all was already announced in March, but it is not supposed to be quite as cheap.
Volkswagen would like to offer an electric car “in the price range around 20,000 euros”. “I think that’s a worthwhile consideration and a sensible goal for the VW brand,” said CEO Oliver Blume of the “Bild” newspaper. For Volkswagen, this would be the “step after next”.
In mid-March, VW had already announced the electric small car ID.2all, which should cost less than 25,000 euros. The two-door should have a range of 450 kilometers and front-wheel drive. At the time, VW also announced that the manufacturer was working “despite all the challenges” on an electric car for less than 20,000 euros.
According to Blumes, VW should be “the strongest international automobile manufacturer” in the important Chinese market. In China, a quarter of all cars sold last year were electric vehicles. VW expects this share to increase to 50 percent in the next two to three years. On the question of Chinese competition, Blume said that the Chinese had learned a lot in the past few decades and were presenting an enormous pace of innovation.
“E-cars in the big megacities”
“They use e-cars for short distances and in the big megacities,” said the VW boss. In rural areas, VW cars with hybrid or combustion engines “continue to be very successful”. The Volkswagen brand “has great appeal”.
Sales by VW in China fell by 14.5 percent in the first quarter of this year. The People’s Republic is the most important market for VW. Blume said that VW is still the market leader for combustion models there. “We want to transfer our strengths to electric vehicles.”
Dacia already at the 20,000 euro mark
The Romanian manufacturer Dacia already offers a small electric car in Europe for around 20,000 euros. According to the company, the Dacia Spring has a range of up to 230 kilometers. Dacia is a subsidiary of Renault. Renault itself wants to launch an electric small car in the ID.2all price range in 2024. The Opel parent company Stellantis also has such plans.
In the case of small cars in particular, the total costs for an electric vehicle are currently much higher than for a classic combustion engine. The small cars are currently almost twice as expensive to buy as the combustion variant, as the ADAC recently explained.