“Anything Tesla Can Do, We Can Surpass,” Says Volkswagen Chief

Herbert Diess, Volkswagen’s brand chief, told reporters recently he believes his company can beat Tesla when it comes to selling medium priced electric cars. “Anything Tesla can do, we can surpass,” Diess said in Germany at a press conference according to the Financial Times. “[Tesla] is a competitor we take seriously,” Diess said. “Tesla comes from a high priced segment, however they are moving [to less expensive cars]. It is our ambition, with our new architecture, to stop them there, to rein them in.”

Diess said Volkswagen has set a goal of selling 1 million electric cars a year by 2025. By contrast, Tesla’s Elon Musk says his company will get to that level of sales 5 years earlier. One advantage Diess believes the Wolfsburg based company has is its MEB chassis platform, which will be adaptable to many different body styles. Having a common platform greatly lowers production costs. So far, it has used that chassis to make three concept cars, the ID, the ID Budd-E, and the ID Crozz.

Interestingly enough, Tesla is not following the common chassis model. With SUVs being the hottest segment of the new car market worldwide. it says its upcoming midsize SUV — the Model Y — will be built on a separate platform, giving Tesla a total of four separate chassis for four separate cars. The Model X with its falcon wing doors was supposed to be based on the Model S chassis, but as that car moved toward production, it became essentially a separate vehicle with 80% new parts.

Why is Tesla bucking the trend? Elon says his company is making great progress in making manufacturing more efficient. The production line for the Model Y will be an order of magnitude more efficient than the line just now being installed to make the Model 3, so any loss incurred by using a separate chassis will be more than made up for by gains in productivity.

Musk intends nothing less than the total disruption of global manufacturing at the same time as he is turning the auto industry on its head. creating a global satellite network, sending shockwaves through the space exploration business, implanting neuro-transmitters into people’s brains, and boring tunnels under continents.

Volkswagen recently reclaimed its crown as the world’s largest automaker in terms of the number of cars sold, so it is clearly a force to be reckoned with. But Musk has a much broader focus than just cars. It will be interesting to look back in ten years to see whose vision of the future comes closest to reality.

Source: CNET Road Show

Volkswagen Restructures, Adds Dedicated Electric Car Division

Rocked by a diesel emissions cheating scandal that has cut Volkswagen’s share price by one third and cost investors billions, Volkswagen head Herbert Diess has restructured the company into four new divisions. “We expect these changes to bring about a major acceleration in (vehicle) development,” Diess said. The new structure “strengthens cooperation across all functions and also increases the profitability of the brand.”

According to Reuters, three of those divisions will deal exclusively with small cars, like the Up!, compact cars like the Golf, and larger cars like the Passat. Each division also has crossovers and SUVs within its mandate. The important news, though, for those hoping VW can pull out of its tailspin, is that the development of all Volkswagens with batteries will now be the responsibility of one group of employees with one general manager.

The person Volkswagen has hired to run the battery car division is Christian Senger, who was previously the head of electronics and autonomous driving technology at Continental, a major supplier to the automotive industry. He began with Continental in 2012, after two years at BMW, where he worked on that company’s i3 and i8 vehicles.

Volkswagen showed off the first concept car built on its all new Modular Electric Toolkit, known internally as MEB, at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas earlier this month. The BUDD-e concept is a re-interpretation of the iconic VW Microbus that became the vehicle of choice for hippies everywhere in the 60’s. The BUDD-e features a 101 kWh lithium ion battery and is said to have a range of nearly 300 miles.

A “toolkit” is industry slang for a common chassis platform that can be used to build a variety of different cars on the same assembly line. That saves time and development costs, which helps a company operate more profitably. The concept was first developed by world renowned and long time Volkswagen/Audi engineer Ulrich Hackenberg, who departed the company quite suddenly last December. The BUDD-e may be several years from production. Certainly, its battery is nowhere near ready for manufacture.

Senger will be tasked with propelling Volkswagen forward into the age of electric cars as quickly as possible, so the company can move on from its embarrassing diesel emissions debacle. Certainly the sooner it can show customers and regulators that it is working hard to redeem itself the better. Will it ever reclaim its title as world’s largest car company? That remains to be seen. But if it accomplished it once, it could very well do so again.