Volkswagen faced one of the largest diesel emission debacles in the century, but the company is highly confident about their comeback and looks forward to a favorable position in the auto industry before 2020.
Speaking to the media, Volkswagen’s CEO Matthias Muller confirmed that the brand is set to undergo a fundamental realignment in order to comeback with a bang. He added that they are betting high on electric vehicles and do have plans to launch at least 20 of them by 2020. Even though, not all of them are going to be fully electric cars, majority of them will be, while the others will be plug-in hybrid variants.
The twenty cars will get launched under the brand Volkswagen as well as under their other brands namely Audi, SEAT and Skoda. Sustainability is their highest priority at the moment. He added that a serious breakthrough into moving the world towards electric cars is not possible unless buyers, government and authorities support to bring it into action.
Phaeton is a concept under development by Volkswagen. It is considered to be the epitome of technology when it gets launched. The supposed to be fully electric car will feature an extremely long range without relying on petrol engines, has best connectivity, support for multiple mobile apps and next gen assistance system.
While Volkswagen including many other companies are positive about electric cars at the moment, they may not say the same thing about autonomous vehicles. There are too many restrictions and social taboos surrounding it that intimidate vehicle manufacturers. However, Tesla took the plunge and offered a solution on their Model S, provided the driver continues to be in the steering wheel to keep the riders safe.
VW didn’t comment on the autonomous technology during the meet. However, they discussed at length about the advantage of EVs and how it will help make the world curb emission like never before. They have also developed the MEB Toolkit. It makes it seamless to integrate all the electric tech on every car from the manufacturer without any difficulty.
The company aims to offer a minimum of 150 miles on even the lowest electric car and hybrid while the highest range is said to be at 300 miles on a single charge. The biggest challenge is to price them at an affordable point so that electric vehicles could reach the mainstream audience. Volkswagen looks confident of their comeback.
