“Chicken Tax” brakes Amarok
VW enters the SUV market in the USA with the Scout brand
05/11/2022, 8:29 p.m
With pick-ups and SUVs, US automakers earn a golden nose on their home market. VW also wants a piece of the cake. After the customers forgave the Wolfsburg-based company for the diesel affair, Volkswagen jumped in: a new brand, new models and probably a new plant.
Europe’s largest carmaker Volkswagen is entering the lucrative business with pick-ups and SUVs in the USA and is launching two purely electric models. The supervisory board gave the go-ahead for the plans of the executive board, which wants to revive the traditional US brand Scout. A separate company for design, development and production is to be founded in the USA before the end of this year. In a first stage, 100 million euros are to be invested in the project, according to people close to the company.
The electrified Scout brand will rely on a new technical platform concept, Volkswagen announced. The first prototypes are to be shown next year. Series production is scheduled to start in 2026. The car company did not give any financial details.
The search for a way to gain a foothold in the pick-up market had been going on for some time. With the Amarok, Volkswagen’s light commercial vehicles have had such a model in their range for many years – but it was not sold in the USA of all places. One reason was a bizarre import hurdle with which Washington had repaid trade barriers for exported chickens with higher import duties for certain types of cars (“Chicken Tax”). As a result, domestic providers such as General Motors and Ford dominated the domestic business with pick-up trucks. US electric car manufacturers such as Tesla and Rivian are now also active in the sector.
An Amarok successor developed by VW platform partner Ford is to be presented this summer. So far, the group has delivered a good 830,000 Amaroks in Europe, South America, South Africa and Oceania.
Diess wants to make VW an important player again
With Scout, Volkswagen is entering the segment for SUVs and pick-ups, which is dominated by General Motors and Ford and generates high returns. “Now that Volkswagen has managed the turnaround in the USA, we are now taking the opportunity to further expand our position in one of the most important growth markets for electric vehicles,” said CEO Herbert Diess. Electrification offers the Group a historic opportunity to enter the pickup and all-terrain SUV (R-SUV) segment. So you want to become a major player in the US market.
The name Scout goes back to a model from the former US manufacturer International Harvester. Its truck division was later continued under the name Navistar. The trademark rights to Scout went to Volkswagen when Traton acquired the US truck manufacturer in 2020.
The Scout and Travelall models, manufactured by Harvester, were precursors to popular SUVs from the Big Three Detroit automakers, such as the Ford Bronco and General Motors’ Chevrolet Suburban. Harvester stopped building the vehicles in 1980 after the oil price shocks of the mid-1970s as the company went through a restructuring. Basic tenets of the Scout’s look live on today in vehicles like Ford’s current Bronco and the design of electric startup Rivian’s R1 line of pickups and SUVs.
New work planned
Unlike the two US top dogs Ford and GM, the Wolfsburg car company is planning off-road vehicles that will stand on a specially developed platform. At the plant in Chattanooga in the US state of Tennessee, where the ID.4 is to roll off the assembly line from summer and which is to be expanded for the production of the electric Bulli successor ID.Buzz, the capacities were not sufficient, said an insider. That’s why you’re thinking about a new work.
Diess recently announced a growth plan for the US to reduce its reliance on business in China. The market share in the USA, where VW struggled to pull itself together after the diesel scandal almost seven years ago, is expected to more than double to ten percent by 2030. Volkswagen has already announced the construction of a battery cell production facility in the USA. The location is not yet known.