Automotive News Europe - February 2020 - 7

AUTOMOTIVE NEWS EUROPE

COVER STORY

hatchback promises to define a coming era
for VW. Only this time it's not the Golf, it's
the full-electric ID3. Despite the prosperity achieved from the success of its
best-seller, the Golf's future seems more
in doubt than ever. To meet stringent upcoming emissions targets, VW is shifting
focus toward electric vehicles built off a
dedicated architecture that cost more
than 6 billion euros to develop. Funding
that transition are high-margin crossovers such as the Tiguan and T-Cross
that enjoy broad global appeal.

Stuck in the middle
"The Golf could soon begin to look like
one of those airline passengers stuck in
the middle seat," said Matthias Schmidt, a
Berlin-based independent industry analyst.
"It's sandwiched between two sumo wrestlers: the expanding number of SUVs on
the one side and electric vehicles feasting
on CO2 legislation on the other." Analysts
believe a Golf successor, which presumably would be sold into the early 2030s,
depends heavily on the future of carbon
emission targets, Euro 7 pollutant caps
and the intersection in cost curves where
electric vehicles become more affordable
to build than combustion engine cars.

across Europe. The Golf is also the most
sought after used car, taking the top spot
even in France and Italy last year, according to search results from online site
AutoScout24. Jürgen Stackmann spent
20 years of his life at Ford of Europe
searching in vain for the winning formula
that would break the Golf's stranglehold
on the segment. "You couldn't crack
it. Whenever we thought we were getting close, it made another leap forward
technologically," said the executive, now
in charge of sales and marketing for the
VW brand. "It perfectly reflects the mainstream of society. If you look at the age of
the average German, it's virtually identical to that of a Golf owner."

The benchmark
Executives expect the eighth-generation
Golf, which will start arriving in showrooms across Europe during the coming
weeks, will once again set the benchmark
in its class in terms of CO2 emissions,
comfort, craftsmanship and connectivity. Three new 48-volt mild hybrids that
can turn off the engine when coasting are
on offer while the GTE plug-in hybrid variant returns, offering two different performance levels. The diesel version reduces
harmful nitrogen oxide emissions by up
to 80 percent and even a TGI derivative
that runs on compressed natural gas is
planned. The GTD diesel, Golf R and GTI
performance cars arrive this year as well.

LEAGUE OF ITS OWN
The Golf outsells a long list of brands
in Europe (2019 full-year sales)
VW Golf
410,779
Nissan 390,809
Volvo 339,696
Suzuki 259,876
Mazda 251,308
Mini 216,590
Jeep 163,031
Land Rover
146,389
Mitsubishi 145,437
Source: JATO Dynamics

lion paying users every year to its own virtual in-car shopping mall. This proprietary
ecosystem called Volkswagen We aims to
sell new goods and services, for example,
the option to enable automatic cruise control on a vacation drive to Italy. Not only do
such functions-on-demand provide fresh
revenue streams, they can tether the customer more closely to the brand, increase
the likelihood of a repeat purchase and
even boost resale value because the car
is upgradeable. How much revenue this
could add is still unclear, according to VW.

What sets the new Golf apart is that it
is VW's most technologically advanced
model to date. The car is equipped with a
fully digital cockpit, an embedded cellular
modem for over-the-air updates, and the
ability to communicate with other cars and
surrounding infrastructure at distances up
to 800 meters. It even comes with natural voice recognition that includes a Smart
Home integration via Amazon Alexa.

To ensure its cars are fit for this smartphone-inspired business model, the
brand has committed to investing roughly 3.5 billion euros in digitalization by
2025 and overhauled its contract with
European dealers. No model is more ideally suited to accomplish this important
task, since a new Golf is sold every 45
seconds on average. "This makes it one
of the most digitally relevant vehicles on
the road," said Schmidt, who is also the
publisher of a monthly report on Europe's
EV market. "That the Golf is the first model to receive this can almost be seen as
a long-term thank you gift for its many
years of service."

This isn't just thanks to VW's extensive
distribution network of 5,400 dealers

VW's mission for the Golf is simple: form
the vanguard of a new fleet of digitally enabled vehicles that eventually draw in 5 mil-

In the process, however, a host of programming glitches delayed the car's
European launch. The complexity of

GOLF I - 6.99 million sold

GOLF II - 6.3 million sold

GOLF III - 6.83 million sold

Pressed about whether there would be a
ninth-generation Golf, Brandstätter said
he had "no reason today" not to expect
one. But simply posing the question would
not have been imaginable in the past. Traditionally the most popular car in Europe
overall, the Golf dominates the compact
segment. According to figures from JATO
Dynamics, 410,779 Golfs were sold last
year in Europe. That number rises to about
454,000 if the Sportsvan derivative is included. The Golf outsells its closest competitor, the Ford Focus, by nearly a 2-to-1
margin and many brands fail to match the
car's volume across their entire product
ranges (see table, above, right).

1974-1983
FEBRUARY 2020

1983-1991

1991-1997
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Automotive News Europe - February 2020

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