About one year before the start of production of the fully electric ID., Volkswagen has announced further details of its electric offensive. Throughout the Group, up to 15 million vehicles based on the Modular Electric Toolkit (MEB) are to be built in the first wave, compared with 10 million vehicles according to previous plans. Up to 2023, the brand will be investing more than €11 billion in e-mobility, digitalization, autonomous driving and new mobility services, including more than €9 billion in the ID. family. The electric offensive was also a topic at the MEB Supplier Event. Yesterday, more than 30 CEOs from the key component suppliers came to Wolfsburg to usher in the hot phase of preparations for the ID. together with Dr. Herbert Diess, CEO of the Volkswagen Group, and members of the Volkswagen brand Board of Management.
“The Volkswagen brand is consistently forging ahead with its electric offensive. This also includes cooperating with strong partners. The new Volkswagen ID. will feature the technologies and ideas of the most innovative companies in our industry,” said Ralf Brandstätter, Chief Operating Officer and member of the Board of Management of the Volkswagen brand responsible for Procurement. Production of the ID. is to start at the end of 2019 at the Zwickau plant. “We are now entering the decisive phase. In about 12 months, the new ID. will usher in a new era for Volkswagen, comparable with the first Beetle or the first Golf. We are preparing for this event extremely carefully together with our partners,” said Thomas Ulbrich, Member of the Board of Management of the Volkswagen brand responsible for E-Mobility.
With the fully electric, fully connected ID., Volkswagen will be bringing onto the roads a new generation of vehicles that will set new standards for digitalization and connectivity. The ID. will always be online and connected to the Internet via an Automotive Cloud. Updates and upgrades will continuously make the car better. Against this backdrop, Volkswagen is stepping up its cooperation with software companies and developers. One of these companies is Elektrobit (EB) from Erlangen. “The example of the ID. shows that software is essential for the car of the future. Together with Volkswagen, we are working to ensure that our software makes vehicles safe and reliable on one hand and allows the convenient use of innovative services from the cloud on the other hand,” said Alexander Kocher, President EB.
Cooperation among equals
In the case of the ID., Volkswagen involved its top suppliers in design and development at a considerably earlier stage and more intensively. Ralf Brandstätter: “We have redefined our cooperation with suppliers. We say what we need and the suppliers tell us how they can produce it with the best possible quality levels as efficiently as possible. This means that we can rapidly incorporate the best innovations into the car. Customers benefit directly from this new type of cooperation.” Suppliers also appreciate this cooperation among equals. “Safe, clean and intelligent: for the ID., we are bringing our skills from the technological areas of networking and electrification onto the road together. For us, this cooperation has a model character. It shows how we can successfully shape the future of mobility together in the context of complex transformations,” said Dr. Elmar Degenhart, CEO of Continental AG.
The Volkswagen brand intends to make the electric car popular with as many people as possible and to ensure that it makes a breakthrough. With the ID. family, Volkswagen will be bringing onto the roads a new vehicle generation that makes optimum use of the possibilities of e-mobility from 2020 onwards. Among other features, the models in the ID. family offer a long range, a spacious interior, dynamic driving behavior and an entirely new level of digital connectivity. The first model will be the compact ID; this is to be produced from the end of 2019 at the Zwickau plant, which is currently being transformed into the highest-performance electric car factory in Europe. By 2025 at the latest, the brand intends to sell 1 million electric cars per year throughout the world.
SOURCE: Volkswagen
