After one of the largest scandals in automotive history, Volkswagen has embarked on the largest program of electrification in the global car industry, pledging to spend $25 billion to develop battery-powered or hybrid variants of every one of its models by 2030.
CEO Matthias Müller’s goal is to make EVs, currently concentrated at the high end of the market, cheap and commonplace, inspired by Volkswagen’s own 1960s Beetle which was instrumental in bringing mass-market driving to postwar Europe.
“Volkswagen is “absolutely more ambitious on EVs than the other global giants,” says Max Warburton, an automotive analyst at Bernstein Research in London. “You would have wondered a year ago to what extent Volkswagen was going to follow through on their headlines, but it’s really happening, and they’re serious.”
Read the article at Bloomberg Businessweek.