Volkswagen To Spend Over $40 Billion on Electric and Self-Driving Cars (reuters.com)

Volkswagen plans to spend more than 34 billion euros ($40 billion) over the next five years on developing electric cars, autonomous driving and other new technologies, it said on Friday. "With the planning round now approved, we are laying the foundation for making Volkswagen the world's number one player in electric mobility by 2025," Chief Executive Matthias Mueller said in a statement.

Comments

Cars of the future

[Arzaboa]

Electric cars are quick, efficient and quiet. Imagine NYC if the sound of engines were taken away. Imagine a small 40,000 person community. Imagine the tangible differences; less smog, less noise. This is a great solution for people that live in urban areas. I think people will find the ease of use, the different feel of being so quiet, and how little maintenance has to be done so appealing that it is going to become irresistible to almost anyone buying a new car, relatively soon.

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"Life is a journey. When we stop, things don't go right." - Pope Francis

Re:e-Golf is almost perfect

[Rei]

I just don't understand why someone would choose a Bolt unless they were either really opposed to waiting, or really hated minimalism. For example, you mention charge time; Model 3 charges 2 1/2 times faster than that. With a global charging network, single network, evenly spaced, well monitored and maintained (unlike CCS which is... well, not). With an onboard capability even faster for when charger powers rise. And on Bolt, even that level of fast charging is an optional extra. The interior is Fisher-Price style, the base price is higher, the available options list is much more meagre, performance - while not bad - is worse, it looks dorky, GM EV depreciation rates are far higher than Teslas, Chevy customer satisfaction rates are much lower, and on and on.

Bolt just looks so incredibly unappealing to me in pretty much every respect. I mean, if it had come out several years ago it would have been game changing. But today? Just looks like an also-ran.

As for Volkswagen and this news, however: I've often sniped at other manufacturers for pretending to focus on EVs, while not actually putting forth the money to make themselves competitive - because the capital involved in tooling up is huge, and if you only go small scale, your unit costs will be too high to be profitable. You know, you see a company announce $10-12B in 10 years, likely backloaded, and it's like... yeah, you're missing a zero there. But this - $40B in five years? This is actually serious. This is the sort of money a company needs to actually pose a threat to a company like Tesla.

Best of luck, VW. The gauntlet has been thrown down.