VW Bought Enough Batteries To Build 50 Million Electric Vehicles

We already knew Volkswagen had big plans with its electric vehicle family but a new report brings exciting news for EV enthusiasts.

According to VW Group CEO Herbert Diess, the company is ready to handle production of 50 million electric vehicles. The executive said the MEB electric vehicle platform has been “booked” for 50 million cars. He added that battery procurement has also been readied to handle the impressive amount.

“We have bought batteries for 50 million vehicles,” Diess told German trade publication Automobilwoche on Monday. That’s a staggering number given that the entire VW Group sold 10.7 million vehicles last year.

“We will have a very strong product portfolio in electric cars,” Diess added. The CEO said VW wants to attack Tesla with an aggressive pricing strategy. “We will be cheaper than Tesla, and then we will have the big economies of scale,” Herbert Diess said. The executive added that VW will have a “very strong electric car product portfolio.”

The 50 million EVs Diess mentioned represents a theoretical long-term goal for VW’s MEB electric car platform, a VW spokesman explained. In a similar fashion, the VW Group’s current MQB vehicle platform has generated sales of 50 million vehicles over multiple brands and multiple years of sales. The vast majority of those sales were combustion engined vehicles.

VW has set aside €50 billion ($56.3 billion) to procure batteries for the planned 50 million vehicles. Last week, it emerged that VW plans to offer an electric car for as low as €20,000 (about $22,650).

Note: VW ID Vizzion Concept pictured