After Dieselgate, Volkswagen is all in on electric and software.
. You partner with Argo; they make very advanced autonomous systems. There’s even an ID Buzz prototype driving itself around various cities. Argo AI is a software supplier: they make a package, and then they sell it to you in the way that your traditional suppliers would sell you seats or door handles.
On the other side, yes, we also have suppliers there. We’re working with Bosch in the other area, but we want to become able to really drive the car, because we think the big differentiator is — and the big step change in the industry is — are you able to take over the responsibility for driving the car? That makes a big difference.Difficult to say. First thing will probably be the fleets we are running now together with Argo AI. We should get started in 2025 or 2026.
Yeah, definitely. The electrification gave us the chance to bring it back. The Microbus in its historic time frame was quite unique: it offered a huge amount of space on a very reduced platform size. It’s a relatively small car with a huge interior. As auto technology developed over time, cars have become much more complex. Engine technology has become much more complicated, much more bulky, and much more voluminous. Over time, the car lost its initial room efficiency.
I can’t say. The American team has to decide on that. It’s premature because the car will only come to America next year. It’s not yet decided as the car will have the newest features and a lot of range. It will not be as cheap as the first Microbus. We are not doing this only in America: we have been founding charging networks in joint ventures in Italy and Spain; we are invested in IONITY, which is a fast charging network across Europe. We have also invested in a fast charging network in China because we think it’s necessary for electrification. By the way, our American competitor is showing that it can be done. What we see is that it’s a huge opportunity in charging.
One of the ways to reduce that investment is to standardize: either standardize batteries across the industry — which doesn’t appear to be happening — or standardizing the plugs and the charging infrastructure, which is slow going. There is some interest. Every now and again, Elon Musk talks about opening Superchargers. We had the CEO of Polestar on, he says, “Yeah, they talk about it, but it’s never going to happen.
No, we didn’t shift. We have to use all of the suppliers because we’re growing. It’s just so much that no sole company would have been able to do all the investment. Just recently, we decided to build our own battery group. Thomas Schmall is leading that, a colleague of mine.
A good question. I have to tell you a story there, because I used to work for another company in 2012 or 2013, when I first visited a small company in China, which was called CATL. CATL would then have a turnover of, I think, 200 to 300 million. They would do pouch cells for smartphones for a big American customer. I visited them and said, “I need battery cells for cars — first for plug-in hybrids, and then for electric cars.” The guys looked at me and said, “We can’t do cars. It’s too big.
“Electric cars only make sense if the energy is renewable — only if the energy is really green energy that comes from wind or solar or nuclear.” We are second or third position in the Latin American markets — in Brazil and in Argentina. They run their cars on a base of ethanol, which is basically CO2-free, though not entirely. It’s bioethanol. For them, it just doesn’t make sense to switch, so far, to electric cars. They would still need combustion engine technology. There’s a lot of buses now in India becoming electric, but 90 percent of their energy production is on coal. We have to change.
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