You have probably heard about the VW Scout. It is a pending EV made by VW (well, bankrolled by VW) that will carry the Scout name. It will also look something like the original International Scout of the ’70s, like the one VP candidate Tim Walz made a big deal about owning during the 2024 presidential campaign.
The Scout EV will be a lot like the ID Buzz EV VW has been trying to sell that was made to look something like the Beetle-based Microbus of the ’70s but was fundamentally nothing like it – not so much because it’s an EV but because it’s very expensive (about $60k to start, or about three times as expensive in devalued dollars as a ’70s Microbus).
Which of course is a function of it being an EV.
It’s ironic that EVs, which have fewer moving parts than vehicles with engines and transmissions, are so much more expensive – and heavy, too. They are expensive and heavy, as most people know by now, because battery packs are expensive and heavy. Some EV battery packs weigh more than a ’70s Beetle did – as in the whole car. The reason why has to do with capacity. An EV battery pack is something like a gas tank in that it stores energy – electrical energy rather than liquid hydrocarbon energy. But it is also profoundly different in that a gas tank is just an empty container, made of steel or plastic. It is not expensive because it’s just a steel or plastic container. This container weighs very little; less than 100 pounds is typical. It is the liquid hydrocarbon energy – the gasoline – that adds the weight and it doesn’t add that much. A gallon of gas weighs about six pounds. A typical gas tank holds about 15 gallons of gas. Filled with gas, the tank will weigh about maybe 200 pounds.
If the vehicle averages 30 MPG, that 200 pounds of energy storage device will enable the vehicle to be driven for about 450 miles.
In order to store the electrical energy equivalent (given current battery technology) to allow for a comparable driving range, a very large (and very heavy) battery is necessary. Such a battery will weigh 800-1,000 pounds or more than the weight of an engine and transmission in a gas-powered vehicle – which has the Catch 22 effect of reducing the driving range, which in turn creates the need for an even larger, even heavier battery to compensate for the reduced range.
The battery itself is also very expensive – unlike a gas tank.
This is why the ID Buzz (which isn’t that big) weighs 6,000 pounds and costs $60k. It’s also a big part of the reason why it isn’t selling – and it is likely to be the reason why the Scout EV won’t sell, either.
Scout/VW seems to understand this – finally. But only sort-of. The Scout EV has been reconfigured, apparently, to carry some gas – and and a small gas-burning engine – in orderĀ to generate the electricity needed to keep the Scout going when it would otherwise not go very far.
They call this a “range extender” and it is something akin to the V8 soundtrack played by the electric Dodge Charger in that it is a confession – but without atonement. To Dodge’s credit, the atonement has been made. The 2026 Charger has an engine – and you can get it without the battery pack. Dodge became necessarily penitent after it became obvious its sins would not be forgiven. When the battery-only Charger came out in 2024, it attracted buyers like leprosy attracts snuggles. Almost literally none were sold that first year and the second year was hardly better. Dodge had its come-to-Jesus moment. An engine – sans any battery pack – became available this year (2026) and so far this year, Dodge has sold far more Chargers than were sold during all of 2024 and 2025 combined.
VW could pre-emptively atone by just putting an engine and a tank in the Scout and forget about the battery pack. This would accomplish several important things – assuming VW wants the Scout to sell. The first is, it would allow VW to sell the Scout for thousands less and that is likely to be increasingly important as people become less and less able to pay $50k-plus (the EV Scout’s anticipated bas price) for what ought to be a simple, utilitarian vehicle – which is what the original Scout (like the original VW Microbus) was. It would also reduce the weight of the Scout by 1,000 pounds or more – which would have the salutary effect of increasing the thing’s driving range.
How about a diesel-engined Scout?
Such an engine would be ideal for a vehicle of this type. High-torque, long-range and inherently durable. VW makes excellent diesel engines. Too bad it allowed itself to be given the hairshirt treatment over its excellent diesels – ironically, because they posed an existential threat to batteries and motors, by making them look absurd. A $22k Jetta TDI with a 700 mile range isn’t a flattering cross-shop for a $50k Telsa 3 with a 300 mile range that also requires serial waits for a charge. That’s why VW was roasted over the coals back in 2016. The “cheating” was just the cover story used to justify the roasting. 
Well, the past is the past – and there’s always time for atonement. Just because VW sinned (not by “cheating” but because it accepted guilt for something it did that wasn’t wrong) does not mean VW must wear the hairshirt forever. VW could just take the damned thing off, cross itself and go and sin no more.
By putting an engine – ideally, a TDI engine – in the Scout and not apologizing for it. The reward would not be in Heaven. It would be in the showroom.
. . .
If you like what you’ve found here please consider supporting EPautos.Ā
WeĀ depend onĀ youĀ to keep the wheels turning!Ā
Our donate button isĀ here.Ā
Ā If you prefer not to useĀ PayPal, our mailingĀ address is: EPautos 721 Hummingbird Lane SE Copper Hill, VA 24079
Yep, no point to diesel passenger vehicles when an electric motor gets you all the torque at zero RPM.
Like the Scout future hybrids will continue to use gasoline but switch from parallel designs (where the engine can mechanically connect to the wheels) to series designs where the engine never connects to the drive wheels but instead just acts as a generator.
Ah Christ, here comes another EeeVee pickup that at least three dozen people want to buy:
‘Fordās new budget-conscious electric pickup ā dubbed the Fathom ā will start at just under $30,000 when it arrives next year, the companyās opening bid to become competitive with low-cost electric vehicles from China.
‘Ford revealed the vehicleās name and a starting price of $29,945 including shipping fees, confirming its long-stated plan to price the truck around that level. Pre-orders will begin in early 2027, with deliveries starting later in the year, the company said.
‘The Fathom is Fordās first vehicle based on a new universal electric-vehicle platform that will eventually underpin a series of affordable electric models. Developed in California by a top-secret operation led by Tesla Inc. veterans, the next-generation EV was engineered to be lighter, sleeker and more electrically efficient.’ — LA Times
https://archive.ph/ghu2b#selection-2779.0-2787.327
Unfathomable, it is not? Globally, the EeeVee debacle has cost auto makers more than $100 billion in losses. But they just keep pushing more of these unwanted surplus appliances on us, like day-old, unrefrigerated fish.
WTF? I feel like I’m taking crazy pills!
I realize that the ‘Fathom’ is such a gobsmackingly stupid idea that y’all probably I was making it up. But no, really, see for yourself:
https://www.ford.com/electric/fathom/
Ford’s ludicrous campaign consists entirely of ‘active lifestyle’ photos — precisely the geography where obese, diabetes-ridden Americans are not going to chance taking an EeeVee!
Just to make perfectly clear:
Q: Is the estimated driving range currently available for Ford Fathomā¢?
A: The projected EPA-estimated driving range figures for Ford Fathom are not yet available.
Well, that’s reassuring!
‘I want my, I want my ER-EeeVee’ — Dire Straits, Money for Nothin’
Why exactly does Lightning Jim Farley, who thought up this ridiculous contraption, still have a job as Ford’s CEO? Effing clown.
Hi Jim,
Ford is being coy about the Fathom’s standard range because that’s key to marketing this thing’s “low price.” Broadcast that the thing will list for $28k or so. Do not say a thing about how the one at that price will have a driving range so restricted as to be effectively useless. I’ll bet you a twenty that with the “long range” option, the thing will cost around $35k.
Ford foolishly offered me an online survey after I visited their Fathom site. This was my reply to the final question:
https://postimg.cc/gL87ckBP
Promises made; promises kept! š
Excellent! I wonder if anybody there will notice that you corrected their misspelling of EVs?
Absolutely a TDI Diesel 4 cylinder would sell even with the absurdly high diesel prices.
For an old fart like me, this is confusing. When I hear “Scout,” I think of this vehicle:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Scout
Did VW buy the rights to the name, or did the rights lapse?
Even if people wake up and cast off the chains, the automobile is already gone and will have to be re-invented. The damage government schools have done to young minds means American youth do not have the curiosity, imagination or cognitive ability to restart the industry, and it will have to be re-invented.
All of the old books with the basics on how a combustion engine works were removed from public libraries during the covid lock downs, along with the rest of the old books as well. In addition, under government pressure, manufacturers have stopped working on old cars, and Blackrock/Vanguard/State Street use their ownership of every single company on earth to discontinue parts for older cars and shut down the factories that make them and destroy all the manuals for making them.
The majority of people with the knowledge to build an automobile from scratch are in their fifties and older, which means a great many of them are now badly disabled.
And the current seven-year loans mean most car loans will end with repossession (because once the car is dead after five years, the payments will stop), and even they know eight year loans for cars no one wants or can afford are a non-starter.
Let’s face it, the automotive industry has been destroyed and its ground salted. Make no mistake, cars will have to be re-invented. Best we all forget about Ferrari, Ford, GM, Porsche, Mercedes, Toyota etc. because they all obeyed orders to commit suicide and cannot be brought back.
Another dark age on deck.
Yes, I watched the mostly fat ugly women of JCLS in Oregon remove useful old books and replace them with 300 section brainwashing garbage since 2020. The poor kids under 40 dont have a clue.
Estate sales are the place to look for useful books. People will have to learn to create their own community libraries as anything the government runs will necessarily turn to shit.
What a magnificent vignette of the twilight of empire! It calls to mind an evocative scene from the late Alan Clark’s Mrs Thatcher’s Minister, on the way to a funeral:
The heat was oppressive and we set off in casual clothes, intending to change en route. Some little distance from Pevensey we diverted and found a wooded glade just nearby to the canal, and started to undress. This aroused the disapproval of two people, fat and ugly, who were slumped in deckchairs by the canal bank and who clearly thought we were going to make love.
To tell the truth I would have liked that. The proximity of death always makes me feel sexual. But our timing was tight. Guests were enjoined to be in their places at least forty-five minutes before the service started.
I cannot adequately record how ugly those people were. The man squat, paunchy, resentful in his horn rims; the woman gross, runkled-up nylon skirt, varicose veins, eating from a paper bag. At intervals each drew on a cigarette. Beside them glistened two luckless baby bream which the man had caught with his line.
Jane had a brilliant idea. That, once impeccably dressed in our funeral weeds, we should reverse back to their site and kill them, leaving the wreath which we were taking over for Ian. And removing instead, a fish, to lay beside the open grave. Lovely and black, that humour. Pure BuƱuel.
We’re deep in the throws of a drought (Lake Powell, Mead, et al). We’re deep in the throws of a heatwave across the south (highs in the mid 90Āŗs OH MY!). The blame is anthropogenic global warming. Meanwhile we amateur radio operators have been watching Sol for the last 3 years, as we’re just past the peak of cycle 25. Over the last few years we’ve seen high sunspot counts, large coronal mass ejections (including several very large ones that impacted the Earth, triggering warnings for power grids and radio operators worldwide), flares, and in general a whole lot more activity. This wasn’t anticipated/predicted by NASA, who though cycle 25 would be a rather modest cycle, much like the nothing burger that was cycle 24.
Of course NASA’s prediction makes cycle 25 appear more unusual even though it doesn’t even rank above the top 5 of the 20th century.
But the world’s been snookered into this whole “It’s all your fault” narrative. It does make population control a popular talking point. If we abort enough babies we’ll appease the clime god, apparently. But now the same people who want more abortions also are discovering there aren’t enough workers to fund social security. Now they’re bitching that kids don’t want to start families. Almost like it’s some sort of planned dissonance. Almost…
No, the kids donāt want to be stuck with communist āchild supportā. Until ALL the anti male/anti family policies are dumped, our society will continue to die and be replaced by barbarian 3rd world savages who breed like cats. Both āchild supportā and abortion assumes kids are a cost and a drag, rather than the only hope for the future and the only true wealth.
Absolutely with ya on the climate change religious cult. They believe what they want and no amount of proof/evidence to the contrary is going to change that.
Dr. Warren Farrell, three-time board director for the feminist NOW (National Organization for Women) concluded eventually that child support has nothing to do with supporting children and everything to do with supporting women who divorce. That was 30 years ago.
To get back on topic, if anyone produced a Scout even vaguely resembling the original, I’d snap one up in a heartbeat.
With respect to child support, an accountant friend of mine once mentioned that a man who pays child support cannot deduct the amount of child support he pays from his taxesā¦and that child support is not taxable income for women who receive it.
That is correct. Also, alimony (executed after 12/31/2018) is also not deductible to the payor nor taxable to the payee.
Humans have the urge to reproduce. How horribly effective is the propaganda that takes one of the few instincts we humans have and not only quash it, but make young adults in prime reproductive age find the act repugnant?
We are up against 120 years of Edward Bernays’ genius and incremental progress.
This is on my morning read routine:
https://spaceweather.com/index.html
While I don’t endorse globalist “population control” measures, the US (and much of the rest of the world) functioned quite fine at much lower population levels than there are now. The right’s “things have gone to hell because (white) people aren’t having enough babies” shit has worn thin, as a combination of extreme unaffordability, government nanny state requirements, and a “future that looks so dark I got to wear night vision goggles” (to inverse that 80s song) has more to do with the declining that the whole “women are being selfish” BS.
I am also sick to death of the whole “abortion began with Roe v. Wade” BS from the right as well. The funny thing is, if the “pro-life” (a huge % are okay with war and genocide) looked at the actual statistics as to who has the vast majority of abortions (hint: it is mostly not educated white women) they might not use it as much as a cheap talking point.
I’d like to learn more of what can be expected when this solar cycle goes into its minimum – any suggestions I can check out?
Replying to ReadyK’s post above
Eric: “it attracted buyers like leprosy attracts snuggles.”
I almost lost another keyboard over that one. š
Sadly, for some reason VW is intent on proving they are not the “Peoples Car” but the car of the well to do which isn’t necessarily a bad idea if it works but apparently it isn’t but they keep trying and expecting different results. Crazy.
EVs are like airships, impractical solutions to non-existing problems.
Pity the poor folks of South Carolina, where Scout Motors is building its dark satanic mill. It isn’t enough that they had to suffer ‘leaders’ such as Nimarata Randhawa, Lindsey Graham, and now Darline ‘I don’t do foreign policy’ Graham. No, they had to get their pockets picked to the tune of $1.3 billion by the glad-handing RINO civic booster, Gov. Henry McMaster:
‘McMaster said contractors who performed work to prepare the Scout Motors site for development should be paid now and not have to wait for a review on why the stateās work was $150 million over budget.
‘McMaster on Monday vetoed a provision that required a Legislative Audit Council report on why the Department of Commerce was $150 million over budget on its work to prepare the Scout Motors site in Blythewood for development of a $3 billion electric vehicle plant.
‘Contractors worked as part of a $1.3 billion incentive package to bring Scout’s plant to South Carolina. The $150 million in overruns include $89 million for additional environmental mitigation, $43 million worth of work on publicly owned roads and $18 million for work done out of sequence.
āWell, you always think you could have done something better or something a little different. Iāve been satisfied with the work with the legislature,ā McMaster said. āWe havenāt had fights like they do some in places. Thatās because I know a lot them for a number of years. But if you communicate, collaborate and cooperate … it works like a charm.ā — The State
https://archive.ph/IcoGD
Said like a true Rotary Club, back-slapping wheeler-dealer! Shaking down your own people for $1.3 billion ‘works like a charm’? This is why Repugniclowns should be hunted down like rabid dogs and neutralized.
Hard to believe that anyone is willing to spend $billions to build an EEEEVEEE plant despite all the evidence that no one wants to buy them. Guess they watched Field of Dreamsā too many times and believe that āif you build it, they will comeā.
Neighboring Georgia sold out to Rivian, with a lot of EV manufacturing infrastructure going up in Marjorie Taylor Greene’s district.
‘By putting an engine ā ideally, a TDI engine ā in the Scout and not apologizing for it.’ — eric
Love the idea! But two issues intervene, one short term and one long term.
Short term is the exorbitant price of diesel, owing to Donnie Dickhead’s stupid, evil war. Yesterday the LĆ¼genpresse was all agog over the $100 [per barrel] crack spread for diesel [over crude oil], which is $2.38 per gallon. Diesel isn’t going away as a transportation fuel. So presumably, this too shall pass.
Long term, though, the popularity of diesel delete kits shows that even the humble, rock-solid-reliable diesel engine has been enshitified by an EPA that regards diesel emissions as more poisonous than carbon dioxide!
Having already been spanked by Big Gov in Dieselgate, VW observes its implacable hostility to diesels and perhaps justifiably concludes that it doesn’t want to take on that long-odds battle right now.
Sadly though, in attempting to cater to a previous iteration of Big Gov — “Joe’s Biden’s” EeeVee Fever — VW shot its own feet off. If thick-skulled krauts had a lick of sense, they would pull the plug on their ill-fated Scout venture, before throwing more good money after bad.
All that will save VW now is some kind of Hail Mary pass. How about acknowledging kindly Uncle Adolf as an honorary founder, with his brilliant KdF-wagen concept that had a record-long production run? After all, der FĆ¼hrer’s track record as an amateur auto designer beats the hell out of “Joe Biden’s,” which lies in ruins after costing auto makers tens of billions. š
Jim, how about sticking in the old Pontiac Iron Duke 4 cylinder 151 Ci engine but with TBI this time? As reliable as an anvil and some would say just as fast but dependability counts for something also.
The price of diesel isn’t extraordinarily high compared with gasoline. , though it should be lower. Diesel prices are affected by the extra refining they have to do to meet the stupid tier2 bin5 emissions requirements imposed in 2010 or so.
The Tier 2 bin 5 requires diesel engines to have the same emissions profile as gasoline. Which is like pretending Catilyn Jenner is a girl. Hence, the efficiency advantage of diesel has dropped from 40 percent to around 20-25 percent, eroding their value as an efficiency alternative.
‘Dodge became necessarily penitent after it became obvious its sins would not be forgiven. When the battery-only Charger came out in 2024, it attracted buyers like leprosy attracts snuggles.’ — eric
Mwa ha ha hahhhhh … Eric’s vivid indictment really ought to be on the polished desk of Antonio Filosa at 8 a.m. this morning, with a worried memo prefacing it. Such savage evisceration! What do to, what to do? š
Add a word: ‘The reward would not be in Heaven. It would be in the showroom.’
Thanks, Jim!
Word added, also… too. much coffee/not enough sleep (again).