Automotive News Europe - December 2019 - S41

AUTOMOTIVE NEWS EUROPE

TALK FROM THE TOP

How will these MEB entry-level cars brands by mid-2023. What else might
differ from today to reach that price? we see in the future?
One possible option could be the use of There is the ID Space Vizzion we just
lithium iron phosphate battery cells in- showed in Los Angeles last month. Besides that, we have decided what the
stead of nickel manganese cobalt.
next wave could look like, but we will
Will EVs dilute your margins?
wait and see how the current crop of
Naturally, we don't expect to immediately EVs perform before making a decision in
earn as much money with EVs as we do mid-2020 whether to release the funds
with a technology that we have perfected for their development. So far, the ID3
over decades. In the midterm, however, already has 37,000 pre-bookings, and
we expect that the enormous scale effects this excludes fleets. About 80 percent of
will help us achieve similar profitability those customers are new to the brand.
with a battery-powered car as with an in- We expect that once you drive an EV,
ternal combustion engine car with some you won't have any interest in going back
basic level of hybridization. That means to a combustion engine car.
we would have no further economic incentive to sell combustion cars over EVs. As Is the interest you're seeing in your
far as the customer goes, we have already EVs topping expectations?
reached price parity with an ID3 that costs After showing the vehicles to our national sales companies, importers and
the same as an equivalent Golf diesel.
dealers, every figure we are getting
Will VW artificially limit EV volumes from our distribution channels is higher
to protect profitability during the than the last. We already see demand
transformation phase?
exceeding capacity at Zwickau, so we
We do not see EVs as enablers that help will begin producing our compact SUV
us to continue selling our combustion cars. in Emden earlier than planned. Then
There was this notion that we only needed the Emden factory will add production
a certain number of electric cars to make of our EV sedan, the ID Aero. As a reour combustion engine car fleet compliant, sult, however, the MEB entry model
because that's where we make our money. originally foreseen for Emden will have
But that would mean we would block our to move to another location. Since the
own transformation and never achieve the vehicle is planned for around 2024, we
necessary profitability with electromobility. have roughly a year before we have to
determine what the optimal production
If that is the case, why is VW only tarlocation will be for that vehicle.
geting 74 grams of CO2 per kilometer
under WLTP by 2030? That doesn't
sound as ambitious as your electrification rollout strategy.
That's our compliance target, but I can
assure you that our business model is
much more ambitious. We expect to
amass CO2 credits that in today's terms
would be worth billions of euros.

How can you protect factory jobs
when EVs are 30 percent easier to
build than an internal combustion car?
We need to see the full picture. In the current value chain, we as an industry are
not adding any value when it comes to
fossil fuels save for the few cents to make
the plastic bubble that serves as the fuel
tank. There's not much room to innovate
there. This changes with electric vehicles.
We will produce battery cells ourselves
in a joint venture with Northvolt. We can
sign a contract to provide electricity via
our Elli subsidiary, sell customers a wallbox for their home, or offer our mobile
charging station for large events such as
concerts. So while we may need fewer
workers assembling cars on the line, our
company can create whole new jobs here
in Europe that never existed before because we simply imported all the energy
that was needed to drive.
So with all these EVs coming, do you
still need diesels?
Yes, because they still make sense for
large heavy vehicles and for people who
drive long distances. Soon these diesels
will be so clean that we will reach the
limit of our ability to physically determine tailpipe output of nitrogen oxides.
A next generation of portable emissions
measurement systems (PEMs) would
have to be developed before we could
accurately gauge on-road NOx emisANE
sions at that point.

Could you sell your CO2 credits as
Tesla already does?
By that point, we expect we won't be the
only ones moving in this direction, since
there is no alternative to electromobility. I anticipate there won't be any material demand from our competitors for
all these CO2 credits at that point. But if
there was, we could offer them.
VW brand EV boss Thomas Ulbrich
expects there will be 33 MEB-based
models across four of the group's

2019

In Partnership with

The VW ID Space Vizzion wagon previews the design of what is
likely to become the third EV under the ID family.

www.autonewseurope.com

http://www.autonewseurope.com

Automotive News Europe - December 2019

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