Volkswagen shovels $66 billion at electric cars, digital tech
$36 billion is for electric cars alone.
Volkswagen Group has opened its wallet again and made it clear that it wants to be a leader in electric cars . The German automaker said on Friday that it will spend a total of $66 billion through 2024 on new digital technologies and electric cars.
Of that investment, $33 billion is earmarked to develop electric cars, and mind you, Volkswagen Group spans a large number of brands. We're talking Volkswagen, Audi , Porsche and many more such as Skoda, Lamborghini and its truck divisions. Combined, these brands will introduce 75 all-electric cars by 2029, according to the automaker's most recent strategy.
Of these cars sold annually, VW said 20 million of them will ride on its MEB electric-car platform, of the architecture that underpins the ID 3. It'll serve as the bones for numerous mass-market EVs from VW Group in the years to come, including the ID 4 crossover, reborn Minibus and an electric wagon.
An additional 6 million cars sold by then will ride on the upcoming PPE platform, a combined engineering effort between Porsche and Audi. This architecture will be for premium and high-performance electric cars. Perhaps we'll see a Porsche Taycan successor one day move to the platform. The electric sedan currently rides on a platform called J1, which Audi will borrow for its E-Tron GT electric car.
The remaining amount of cash will go toward hybrid vehicles and new digital technology. In the next decade, VW brands will introduce 60 hybrid vehicles. VW didn't, however, go into any detail on the digital technology it intends to explore. Meanwhile, the automaker set up a new division to work on self-driving cars and will work with alliance partner Ford on autonomous technologies.
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