Volkswagen AG is reportedly discussing a $85 billion, five-year “investment plan” that would considerably increase the company’s commitment to economically untenable, functionally gimped electric vehicles.
Chiefly, for PR reasons – which have now become more relevant than economic reasons.
Spending in other areas has been reined in as VW seeks to reduce capital expenditure to 6 percent of sales.
Volkswagen’s supervisory board is discussing the rolling five-year plan at a meeting on Friday and an announcement could come later in the day, they said.
The plan puts Volkswagen on track to spend about 14.4 billion euros a year, compared to recent annual spending levels of 12 billion euros. The increase shows the pressure on the world’s biggest automaker to manage the transition to the Glorious Era of era of automated electric vehicles.
CEO Matthias Mueller is reportedly “prodding the company to take a leading role in battery-powered vehicles” and unveiled a plan to make electric versions of all 300 models in the 12-brand group’s lineup.
Bring out the Katana . . .
At the same time, Volkswagen is seeking to get its spending under control and has pledged to reduce capital expenditures to 6 percent of sales by 2020. The spending ratio ballooned to 6.9 percent last year.
Will car companies start thinking of this a simply “a cost of doing business”? Meaning to make x number of stupid electric cars, such that they can sell their regular ones?
Hi Tom,
Yes, that is exactly what they will do… and the costs will be folded into the cars that are economically viable… for now, until the add-on costs price them out of existence, too.
Build electric cars that no one wants (for now, until that’s all there is) or build nothing at all. That’s the conundrum faced by car makers these days.
Not one car company has stood up and said no to this nonsense. Only Chrysler has done the electric thing slowly, and that’s probably due to lack of capital to do R&D.