Volkswagen has said that it is unlikely to sell electric vehicles in high numbers until early next decade.
While vehicles like the Tesla Model 3, second-generation Nissan Leaf and Chevrolet Bolt tussle it out for supremacy in the affordable EV realm, VW admits that there simply aren’t enough interested customers in the e-Golf to allow it to compete.
Speaking to Australia’s Motoring at the launch of the new Polo, VW director of development Dr Frank Welsch said selling half a million e-Golfs isn’t possible at this stage.
“Today, I’m not quite sure. For 500,000? It will take probably a couple of years because one thing you see is that customers have to get familiar with these electric cars.
“It’s not easy to give concrete numbers. If you are asking for 500,000, I guess this will be 2021-22. That’s what I guess,” he said.
Welsch admitted that Volkswagen can’t simply push to sell 500,000 electric vehicles annually without worrying about its bottom line. At the end of the day, the brand has to make money off its EVs and doesn’t believe that is achievable just yet.
“The question was to sell 500,000 cars without losing money. We are going to sell without losing money, we have to make money. We are not other car companies. In the first step (with the current E-Golf) we didn’t make that much money, but we cannot as the brand ‘Volkswagen’ in this volume segment, sell 500,000 cars and burn money,” he insisted.
A key reason why the e-Golf isn’t a profit-making machine is that it uses a converted version of the firm’s MQB platform, an architecture designed for ICE and hybrid vehicles, not all-electric cars. Consequently, it won’t be until VW’s new generation of I.D. electric vehicles hit the market that the brand sells EVs at a profit thanks to the impending use of the all-electric MEB platform.
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