Tesla's lead in
the electric car market will be short-lived, Volkswagen boss Herbert Diess has
declared, as his company prepares to counter with zero-emission cars of its
own.
Diess says he is confident
that VW will overtake Tesla and become the world's largest electric car maker
by the middle of the next decade, in what will be the 10th anniversary of the
uncovering of the company's diesel emissions scandal, where it lied to
regulators and the public about pollution produced by its vehicles.
Speaking at a
company press conference in Germany, Diess said VW plans to sell one million
electric cars per year by 2025.
US electric car maker Tesla sold around 80,000
cars in 2016, but plans to ramp up production so aggressively that it can reach
one million annual sales by 2020.
Confident his
company will "leapfrog" the US start-up, Diess said: "Anything
Tesla can do, we can surpass...We are confident that in this new world we will
become a market leader." VW hopes to become a leader in the electric
mass-market, not just the luxury electric sector Tesla currently leads.
VW
is by far the largest vehicle manufacturer in the 12-brand Volkswagen Group,
which includes Audi and Porsche, who are also working towards an electric
future. VW's ability to scale up its electric efforts is thanks to the VW
Group's MQB platform (Modularer Querbaukasten, or modular transverse matrix).
The MQB uses a matrix of components shared across various VW brands and allows
for different vehicles to be produced efficiently and at the same factory.
Diess
went on to describe Tesla as "a competitor we take seriously. Tesla comes
from a high-priced segment, however they are moving down. It's our ambition,
with our new architecture, to stop them there, to rein them in."
This
"moving down" refers to Tesla's Model 3,
which will cost from $35,000 (£27,000) – half that of the Model S – and goes
into mass production this summer.
But
modifying the MQB for electric vehicles – and developing electric, hybrid and
internal combustion drivetrains at the same time – will not come cheap.
Speaking at the same press conference, VW's chief financial officer Arno
Antlitz said: "We foresee substantial financial burdens looming,"
reports the Financial Times.
Although VW is yet
to begin selling purpose-built electric cars like Tesla, the company has shown
off several electric concepts in recent years. These include the ID Buzz, an electric take on the classic VW
Campervan, and the ID, a look at what a VW Golf of the future might look like. SOURCE;http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/we-are-coming-you-tesla-says-volkswagen-boss-electric-car-warpath-1620761
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