For the last year, Volkswagen has been trying to recover
from their diesel-emissions cheating scandal, and now they are planning for
their future, electric cars. The company plans to introduce as many as 30
electric models spread across all their brands by 2025. And now it appears that
some of those VW branded models will be built in North American, according to
Volkswagen Group of America CEO Hinrich Woebcken.
“VW is evaluating its
plants in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and Puebla, Mexico, as production sites for
an electric car that will launch in 2020”,
Woebcken said in a
recent interview with The Wall Street Journal.
Woebcken indicated that the
decision was based on anticipated electric-car demand in the U.S. VW going
forward with building an electric car in North America is going to go a long
way in rebuilding their public image and re-establish its green credentials.
The plant in Tennessee opened in 2011, as part of VWs major expansion push into
the U.S.
VW currently builds at their
Tennessee plant the mid-size sedan the Passat. They are planning on building
their new three-row crossover at the beginning of next year. The bulk of VWs
that are for the U.S. market are built in the Mexican plant. Currently the
Jetta, Golf, and Beetle are the main production pieces there. The second
generation Tiguan is also slated to be produced there as well. The redesigned
Tiguan was unveiled last fall at the 2015 Frankfurt Motor Show and is scheduled
to go on sale in the U.S. next year.
Currently the only all-electric car
that VW has available in the U.S. is the e-Golf , which is imported from
Germany. The new Tiguan may get a plug-in powertrain option somewhere down the
road. Only certain VW dealers are given the option to sell the all-electric
vehicles, those dealers are in states that are deemed friendly to electric
cars. Those states are: California, Connecticut, Maine, Maryland,
Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, and Vermont, as well
as the District of Columbia.
For the model earmarked for North
American production in 2020, Volkswagen is likely to deploy the new MEB
platform for compact electric cars that it announced last year. Beyond models
based on this platform, VW also has three luxury models planned for European
production. They include an Audi crossover likely to be called Q6 e-tron, a
Porsche sport sedan based on the Mission E concept from the 2015 Frankfurt
show, and an all-electric version of the Volkswagen Phaeton luxury sedan.
No comments:
Post a Comment