On November 18, according to a recent Bloomberg report, despite a general recession in the global automotive market, the Volkswagen Group Supervisory Board reviewed and approved the new Five-Year Investment Plan (2020–2024) for its development in the field of electrification and digital technology. Costs increased from 44 billion euros to 60 billion euros.
This means that after Tesla announced that Gigafactory 4 will be built in Germany, the Volkswagen Group’s “five-year plan” budget increased almost by 36%!!!
Among them, the average annual expenses for engineering, electrification, mobile communications (including autonomous driving) and digitalization increased from the previously planned 8.8 billion euros to 12 billion euros.
Hans Dieter Pötch, chairman of Volkswagen, said in a statement: “We will strongly promote the transformation of the Volkswagen Group and focus on the future development of the automotive industry.”
Volkswagen has also just launched an “ambitious” long-term plan to launch 75 electric models and 60 hybrid models by 2029.
In terms of sales, the Volkswagen Group expects that by 2029, 20 million battery-powered cars will be built on the MEB platform, including Volkswagen, Audi, Skoda and SEAT. The remaining 6 million units will be based on the high-performance PPE electric platform, which is responsible for the Audi and Porsche luxury models.
In order to support the global supply of electric vehicles, in addition to the plant in Zwickau in eastern Germany, which has been producing clean electric vehicles since 2019, the Emden factory in northern Germany will be launched by 2022. In the commercial vehicle sector, Volkswagen will produce a modern version of the “Wagon Bus” at the factory in Hanover, I.D. BUZZ.
It’s not hard to guess that such drastic changes in the Volkswagen Group’s plan came about thanks to Tesla.
On November 13, Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced that Tesla would build Europe’s first full-size automobile factory on the outskirts of Berlin, which will launch the fourth production model of the Tesla - Model Y, as well as batteries and power systems. This means that Tesla will extend the "competition" in the field of electric vehicles to the domestic market in Germany, where Volkswagen is located.
In addition, on November 13, Tesla Gigafactory in Shanghai officially received a serial production license in China from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and officially launched the serial production of Model 3 made in China. China is the world's largest market for Volkswagen.
At the same time, in mid-October, the Volkswagen Group postponed plans to build a new automobile plant in Turkey due to the military operations of Turkey in northern Syria.
In the first half of this year, Tesla showed good results in the German market for new energy vehicles, relying on Model 3.
The presented graphs speak for themselves. Tesla's influence on the German market is growing.
We all must express our gratitude to Tesla. It is thanks to the fact that the company exists, develops and tirelessly follows its goal our planet has a chance for a clean future. We all understand that without Tesla’s influence, the German auto industry would not have invested so much in the development and production of electric vehicles.
Sales analysis data in charts based on Autotijd.be studies
About the Author
Eva Fox
Eva Fox joined Tesmanian in 2019 to cover breaking news as an automotive journalist. The main topics that she covers are clean energy and electric vehicles. As a journalist, Eva is specialized in Tesla and topics related to the work and development of the company.
