VW Group Increases Investment On EVs And New Tech To $66 Billion

Volkswagen decided to boost its spending on the development of electric vehicles and digital services for the next five years to nearly 60 billion euros ($66 billion) during the meeting of its Supervisory Board.

This marks an increase of around 36 percent over the German giant’s previous plan, which was set at 44 billion euro. The annual investment in the areas of hybridization, electric mobility and digitalization amounts to 12 billion euros ($13.2 billion).

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“Hybridization, electrification and digitalization of our fleet are becoming an increasingly important area of focus. We intend to take advantage of economies of scale and achieve maximum synergies. In light of the worsening economic situation, we are also working on increasing our productivity, our efficiency and our cost base so as to secure meeting our targets,” said Herbert Diess, Volkswagen Group’s CEO.

The Supervisory Board of the VW Group has also modified the company’s long-term plans for the next 10 years, aiming to launch up to 75 all-electric vehicles and around 60 hybrids by 2029.

Under the revised new plan, the VW Group plans to sell 26 million electric vehicles, 20 million MEB-based models -under the VW, Audi, Skoda and Seat brands- and 6 million PPE-based high-performance models -mainly from Audi and Porsche- as well as 6 million hybrid vehicles by 2029.

The VW board also said that the final decision on whether to build a new factory in Turkey will be taken by the end of the year, following international criticism of the country’s military operations in Syria.