The Volkswagen Group is rapidly rolling out an electric offensive through its various brands. The Germans want nothing less than to become the market leader in this field.
This ambition was expressed by CEO Herbert Diess during the annual top meeting of the group. The fact that the Volkswagen Group is serious is clear from the amount that is devoted to this goal. Until 2024, they want to invest € 33 billion in the development of electric mobility. It seems that the same year the goal was to be the EV market leader. At the moment, it still has to tolerate Tesla and Chinese brands such as BYD and BAIC are still (miles) ahead of Volkswagen in terms of EV sales worldwide. In Europe, especially Renault, Nissan, Hyundai and Kia are much more strongly represented in this.
The software seems to be a tricky issue. There were regularly disturbing rumors about this at Volkswagen and Diess himself recently indicated that Tesla is causing headaches in this area. The large neural network of Tesla and the way in which over-the-air updates are rolled out, is still relatively unexplored territory for Volkswagen. As a technological leader, Audi must provide completely new IT for the Volkswagen Group with the help of the newly established ‘Car.Software.Org’. In this way they hope to catch up with the competition. In the coming years, VW will invest € 14 billion in the project that should lead to an entirely new VW.OS operating system. Of course, they also respond to autonomous driving. Project Artemis from Audi is expected to lead to the first car with the new VW.OS in 2024.
Porsche
Although the various volume brands of the Volkswagen Group must of course take care of the large numbers of EVs on the road, according to Diess, there is also a special role for Porsche. “The brand has by far taken on the most ambitious electrification strategy of all brands. Porsche expects more than half of all new Porsches to be electrified by 2025.” He also explains that this concerns both full BEVs and plug-in hybrids.