In a Wall Street Journal article analyzing Volswagen’s full bore commitment to electric vehicles I found this quote from VW CEO Matthias Müller telling:
Mr. Müller said Volkswagen had to have its feet planted firmly on both sides of the field. It had to keep developing the combustion engine until the market for new technology takes off. “That’s why I say the technologies will have to coexist,†he said. “One day, electric vehicles will make up 25% of our sales.â€
The emphasis is mine.
Let’s do a quick reality check. EVs presently constitute less than 2% of VW’s sales. If the second largest auto company in the world presently sells fewer than 2% EVs and sees that topping out at 25% “one day” (the largest car company, Toyota, doesn’t produce an EV; hybrids constitute about 25% of its sales), how long will it be before all of the vehicles on the road are electrics?
IMO VW would do better by spending its money rebuilding the trust it’s lost by committing fraud about the emissions produce by its diesels.
Almost entirely off topic except for your last sentence, but…
I don’t feel bad for the people who Volkswagen defrauded with their diesel cars. These people bought from Nazis (or, more precisely, from people and an organization that inherited the wealth of a Nazi corporation), and they should have known better.
Volkswagen profited from slave labor in Nazi Germany. I might be a bit fanatical about this, but I think the company should have been destroyed, along with the factories and profits and the board of directors.
(Annoyingly, the smallest car that fits my enormous body is the Beetle… I would like to be able to find parking spaces, but so far, not enough to buy a Volkswagen)
No, Gustopher, the perpetrators of the fraud should have been prosecuted for fraud. The others (shareholders etc) would suffer as the market saw fit. Your thirst for blood is irrational.
I don’t know the age of all the folks visiting this sight, but I would suggest that not one will see EVs attain 25% share. EVs may eventually have their day, but these things always take longer than the zealots envision, and so much will change along the way.