VW’s Scout operation just announced the device it said would be available for the 2027 model year – i.e.,. sometime this year – apparently won’t be available until late 2028. Which is maybe good timing, because that’s when Trump (and MAGA) are likely to be sent packing. A new regime that will bring back all the EV mandates will then provide the necessary impetus for devices such as the Scout.
Assuming we’re not picking out pieces of already processed corn from radioactive dump piles by then for food.
Like other device-makers, Scout took pre-orders for vaporware. It is quite something that people are willing to pay even $100 to hold a place in line for the right to buy something that may never see the light of day.
And if/when it does, you may wish it never did.
News reports says Scout – meaning VW – is dealing with “technical problems” and “financial pressures.” You don’t say. VW’s situation right now can be understood be comparing it with the Wehrmacht’s situation just after the Battle of the Bulge. It is depleted, exhausted. On the verge of collapse.
Remember that just before VW began to try to sell devices – which it was effectively forced to do by the government as partial penance for having the gall to “cheat” on government emissions-certification tests – it had already been fined and otherwise made to cough up an estimated $30 billion and stop selling models that sold (i.e., its line of affordable, high-mileage, TDI-powered Golfs and Jettas and Beetles).
Not many companies – even VW, which is huge one – can afford to eat $30 billion in fines and settlement costs and also dump more billions into developing a new line of battery powered devices and have them flop. Yet that is just what’s happened. VW has had to dial back some of the new EV launches it had planned and is idling production of the ID Buzz, the “electrified” homage to the classic Microbus VW used to sell that actually did sell – chiefly because it was cheap and practical.
The ID Buzz is neither.
It has a base price of nearly $60k and a best-case driving range of about 230 miles. Like all devices, its biggest failing isn’t its short range so much as it is the long time it takes to suckle even a partial charge. There has been a kind of mass delusion that it is “fast” to have to wait for at least 15 minutes or so to get the electric equivalent of about a a quarter-tank of gas.
That people – most people – will put up with that.
Of course, VW – like every other car company that bought in to device-making – assumed the government would continue to feather the EV nest with generous tax credits for the buyers and a regime of regulations – based on the “endangerment finding” – that served to push alternatives to EVs (new vehicles with engines) out of the showroom. But the Orange Man dumped the “endangerment finding” – that CO2 is a dangerous pollutant and thus subject to regulation as an “emission” – and also ended the tax credits, which means people who want to buy a device must now pay the full cost.
Including the time and hassle cost.
Unfortunately for VW, its prior commitments are now looking like really bad ones. Scout being one of the worst of them.
“Scout” is a name that has some cachet – among people older than 50 who can remember when Scouts were last around, which was back in the late 1970s. VW bought the rights to the Scout name in the hope that it could leverage nostalgia for the Scouts of old to sell new devices bearing the same name. You perhaps see a reboot of the same mistake VW made with regard to the ill-starred ID Buzz. That one was also designed to play on the nostalgia of people old enough to remember the Microbus. The problem is there are only so many aging Baby Boomers – not insult to this generation meant – who are in the market for a $60k trip down Memory Lane.
A short one, at that.
Well, it’s probably going to be the same problem with Scout – the device by that name. How many aging Boomers will (or can) buy an electric 4WD that is expected to start around $60k? How many Millennials (let alone Gen Z) even know what a “Scout” is? Or care, for that matter? Not many, at any rate, have the coin to spend $60k on one. The original Scout sold to young, adventuresome people precisely because it was cheap and you could beat the thing up.
A $60k anything is not something you beat up.
Scout thinks it can sell a device with a “range extender” – that is, an engine – to address the time cost/hassles. And it probably could, if it weren’t for the stupid battery and motors. Maybe they’ll get smart and do something like that; i.e., put an engine in the Scout and forget about the battery and motors and thereby shave probably 2,000 pounds off the curb weight and $20,000 off the base price.
This, by the way, is pretty much what Dodge is doing to salvage the mess it made “electrifying” the Charger. It turns out almost no one was willing to spend $20,000 more for a battery-powered Charger that forced you to spend time waiting for a charge at a Sheetz while everyone else just drove on. That’s why the Charger is available with an engine again.
Here’s hoping VW/Scout takes the hint.
. . .
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VW is becoming like Tesla, announce things they will never make. And if they do someday ship, they are very late.
There’s a simple solution for Volkswagen.
They just need to announce a Scoutbot – soon to be in every home, so owners can stop going to work – and a RoboBug. Soon to be generating trillions of dollars, autonomously driving people around, being safe and effective, because supervised constantly by Scoutbot AI.
And also that solar energy will any day now be streamed down from space to charge everything for free. Even at night.
It works for Elon, so why not for them?
Good stuff, John!
Yup. Elon’s rise is a master class in flim-flam. I also think he’s much worse than just a flim-flam artist. I do not buy his autistic genius persona. I think he is an evil technocrat who is very much a player in this “transition” to AI-everything being pushed on us. Everything he does and says is bullshit. I rail often about Xcrement and Musk’s supposed advocacy of “free speech.” There are still people who think it’s true.
Software problems, comrades — an issue that didn’t even exist for 20th century vehicles:
‘Scout Motors changed strategy and announced that it now prioritizes the extended-range Harvester variants.
‘Like any course correction, this introduced new challenges. Volkswagen partnered with Rivian for the software, including for the Scout EVs, but Rivian has no intention of adapting its software for a hybrid vehicle, or even an extended-range EV. This was Volkswagen’s role, and it appears that the German carmaker is not up to the task.
‘VW is relying on its software division Cariad to adapt the software for Scout’s EREV models. This is the same company that derailed Volkswagen’s EV plans due to subpar software. Cariad will not impress anyone by successfully plugging its EREV software into Rivian’s network architecture.
‘Besides that, Scout Motors’ factory in Blythewood, SC, doesn’t appear to be ready on time. The factory was earlier rumored to run at least $1 billion over the initially estimated costs.’
https://www.autoevolution.com/news/scout-motors-rumored-to-delay-its-us-launch-due-to-lack-of-funding-and-software-issues-265924.html
Color me shocked that VW didn’t pull the plug on its Scout Motors white elephant last year. It’s a slow-motion train wreck.
Germany no longer possesses the energy infrastructure to be a manufacturing nation. Until 2022, it had a limitless supply of cheap Russian gas. Then ‘Biden’ took it away, without eliciting a peep of protest from occupied Germans. They exhibit all the symptoms of learned helplessness with a yankee jackboot firmly planted on their pencil necks.
We should start a betting pool on Scout’s demise. America needs another obese, overpriced EeeVee like it needs another thousand days of Donnie Demento. Beam me up, Scotty — there’s no intelligent life on this planet! 🙁
“Which is maybe good timing, because that’s when Trump (and MAGA) are likely to be sent packing. A new regime that will bring back all the EV mandates will then provide the necessary impetus for devices such as the Scout.”
To this point the Supreme Court’s kicking down using IEEPA for tariffs actually decreases the risk of this.
Gorsuch in his opinion wrote that Trump’s broad implied use of IEEPA as he did when it did not specifically allow it was a ticking timebomb.
He literally said “If we let THIS president use IEEPA for tariffs, what stops the NEXT president from declaring a climate emergency and taxing gas-powered pickup trucks out of existence?”
Kavanaugh then offered several more solidly legal alternative ways tariffs could be implemented that simultaneously undercut the major questions doctrine Trump was abusing.
The separation of powers side effect greatly reduces the regulatory twisting and stretching the bureaucratic state relies upon to get around public opinion and Congress.
The Supreme Court put a temporary halt on Trump, who just 90 minutes later had a new plan.
How could they write up a new, more legally sound plan, in an executive order that quickly without anticipating this ruling?
The more important aspect here is the Court said “Executive, you have to follow the laws exactly and, Congress, you need to get your shit together, write better laws and do your damned job.”
The ruling asserts further precedent to stricter interpretation of laws. It extends the C ourt’s decision in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo to no longer blindly recognize “experts” under the Chevron deference, one “expert opinion” no longer being more important than the actual words in the statute.
Both these decisions in legal terms reduce the power of the executive in the long run. Whether Trump is doing this with intention or is a moron doesn’t matter. Future administrations are the bigger losers in having their hands bound to strict interpretation of laws.
Why didn’t companies follow Toyota’s example and make hybrids instead?
The original scout was a tractor, a rugged economical basic vehicle for rural folks to USE. Dad bought a 77 Scout Traveler with the Chrysler Nissan 6 diesel and the 4 speed. As a callow yout, I despised that 5000 lb, 77 horsepower schweinhund and its zero to sixty times measured with an hourglass. I did figure out I could burn rubber I 4 low without locking in the front hubs, by revving it to the governor and dropping the clutch (nature always finds a way).
But a Scout EV? A toy for grossly overpaid dilettantes who will soon be unemployed by AI? This is a BAD business decision. As a deep hybrid, perhaps with a 80 mile battery pack and a little 40HP turbo diesel, it might be interesting, especially for Maverick money.
EVs have proved their worth or worthlessness with current Lithium battery technology. But what if we have a order of magnitude increase in battery power and life?
There is a DonutLab making ‘absurd’ claims about it’s batteries that industry experts are saying is a scam. DonutLab will be releasing test results of it’s batteries from an Independent Lab next week. We shall see.
https://www.donutlab.com/
And here is a recent article about DonutLabs
https://insideevs.com/news/787887/donut-lab-solid-state-battery-proof-soon/
Batteries are only one side of the problem.
Even if someone literally breaks the known laws of physics and chemistry, you still have to be able to charge the thing.
The power generation needed to do that does not exist, and will not exist in a hurry.
And even when it does, the amperage needed for actual FAST charging means each charging station with a half dozen chargers would need to have a nuclear generator nearby, of a sort that can be powered up and down in seconds. Which is yet another thing that most likely will not exist any time soon. If ever.
Well we do have that zero point module they found in Atlantis- I saw it in teevee so I know all about it.
V Dub hasnt been relevent since the Beetle. Sure they had a couple others in the 80s that were worth a drive but these days, I would buy an Audi just so I could feel like a snob when the tow truck shows up.
Actually, J, VW was doing very well as recently as 10 years ago – largely on the strength of its line of TDI-powered vehicles. No wonder. You could pick up a Jetta TDI for about $22k and get 50-plus MPG and 700 miles of driving range.
If VW had still been making those wonderful, high mileage Diesels, I’d have BOUGHT one! Oh, and don’t you like how the prohibition against Diesel cars hampers manufacturers ability to meet CAFE standards? If Diesels were still allowed, the onerous CAFE standards would be achievable.
Morning, Mark!
I am glad you brought this up – about the TDI diesels. I read a news story this morning about the increase in value of these vehicles. People are snapping them up when they appear in For Sale ads and that is driving the prices up. No wonder. I was lucky enough to get to test drive them when they were new. Phenomenal vehicles that always delivered higher-than-advertised mileage.
A good experiment, Eric, would be to sit in the EV, and where you can charge it, and simply idle the vehicle with the air conditioner turned on to the level that you would normally set it to. Then, see in live time how fast the range depletes just with the A/C turned on, and you not going anywhere.
I like that, Shadow!
I ought to be getting another device soon. When I do, I will do this test!
I think people are under the delusion that because they get a “free” phone just for switching to another mobile carrier the electronics running it are also free. And therefore an EV is just a problem of scale. Fact is, it is in everyone’s best interest to subsidize handsets. It’s one less pain point to deal with. Even Apple sells hardware for less profit than they used to because they know they’ll make up the difference in services like Apple TV and Music (and now productivity software). If people were really paying $2000 for a phone there’d be far fewer smartphones sold.
But for a car, what’s the “value add?” BMW tried selling heated seats as a service, went over like a lead balloon. Sat navigation isn’t enough of a draw to get people to pay a monthly fee, especially when Google owns the market already. Best case scenario is you do leasing with free updates, or a “transportation as a service” model like Uber but without someone driving. But that opens up a whole messy retail plan, one that the dealers aren’t going to like, the legal system isn’t going to like, and the insurance mafia won’t like.
So they have to set EV prices at the real price instead of some subsidized one. Even with the tax credit that number still looks pretty bad compared to ICE transportation. I can imagine a salesman telling a perspective EV buyer “But remember, there’s those tax credits!” every 5 minutes.
That over price electric pile of shit won’t sell anyway someone needs to take the clowns responsible for that to a junk yard and show them what it should be like the original not this rich clown show piece crap.