VW-Chef Herbert Diess
„Wir müssen mit Sicherheit für das Elektrowachstum in den USA weitere Batteriefabriken bauen.“
(Foto: Volkswagen AG)
Angesichts des Ukrainekriegs will Volkswagen andere Wachstumsmärkte außerhalb Europas stärken, vor allem die USA. „Wir müssen uns weltweit noch breiter aufstellen“, sagte VW-Chef Herbert Diess im Interview mit dem Handelsblatt. Der Marktanteil in den USA solle von vier auf zehn Prozent steigen.
Helfen sollen der Elektro-SUV ID.4 und der neu eingeführte Elektrobus ID.Buzz, aber auch weitere Modelle. Diese könnten im US-Werk in Chattanooga produziert werden. „Da wir in Chattanooga in die Grundtechnologie für die E-Auto-Produktion investiert haben, überlegen wir natürlich, welches Modell wir dort noch produzieren werden“, sagte Diess.
Eine Möglichkeit sei ein Elektro-Pick-up, wie der VW-Chef erstmals offenlegt: „Das Segment ist hochattraktiv.“ Beim Modell Amarok „überlegen wir bereits, ob es ihn nicht in einer elektrischen Variante geben sollte“. Außerdem gibt Diess Einblick in die Planung für eigene Batteriefabriken. „Wir müssen mit Sicherheit für das Elektrowachstum in den USA weitere Batteriefabriken bauen.“ Diese müssten nach 2025 anlaufen: „Ob als Joint Venture oder allein, das klären wir gerade.“
Russlands Krieg in der Ukraine verurteilt der VW-Chef. „Die Lage ist viel schlimmer, als wir uns das je hätten vorstellen können.“ Nötig seien harte Sanktionen des Westens. Sorge bereitet Diess, dass kein europäischer Politiker „auf Augenhöhe mit Präsident Putin redet“. Die Drohung Moskaus, die russischen Werke des Konzerns zu enteignen, müsse man ernst nehmen. Die Produktion von Kabelbäumen aus der Ukraine werde VW „vorübergehend abziehen“.
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Herr Diess, wir sind hier auf der Konferenz „South by Southwest“ in Austin, Texas. Doch die Welt schaut derzeit vor allem auf die Ukraine. Wie bewerten Sie die Situation?Es ist ein menschliches Drama, das uns allen sehr nahegeht. Die Lage ist viel schlimmer, als wir uns das je hätten vorstellen können. Viel hängt davon ab, ob es uns gelingt, den Konflikt noch einzudämmen, oder ob der Krieg weiter andauert. Deshalb finde ich es gut, wenn der Westen Russland hart sanktioniert – dann aber auch schnell versucht, an den Verhandlungstisch zurückzukommen.
Wie optimistisch sind Sie, dass das gelingt?Mir macht Sorgen, dass wir keinen europäischen Verhandlungsführer sehen, der auf Augenhöhe mit Präsident Putin redet. Es steht viel auf dem Spiel für Europa und Deutschland. Die Probleme bei der Energieversorgung, in den Lieferketten und die dramatischen Preissteigerungen sind ein Vorgeschmack.
Mit welchen Auswirkungen rechnen Sie für VW?Unmittelbar betroffen sind wir bei den Lieferungen aus der Ukraine. Dort werden vor allem Kabelbäume für unsere Autos gefertigt. Noch produzieren unsere Zulieferer in der Westukraine trotz des Krieges weiter, auch wenn die Produktion auf 30 bis 50 Prozent gefallen ist.
Wollen Sie die Produktion in Nachbarländer verlagern, etwa nach Rumänien?Wir bereiten Verlagerungen vor, wollen die Produktion aber nur vorübergehend abziehen.
Und wie sieht die Lage in Ihren russischen Werken in Kaluga und Nischni Nowgorod aus?Unsere russischen Werke stehen still. Unsere dortigen Angestellten bezahlen wir weiter. Ein Zeitlimit gibt es bisher nicht. Ersatzteile liefern wir auch weiterhin nach Russland.
Produktion bei VW in Kaluga
Die VW-Werke in Russland stehen derzeit still.
(Foto: Volkswagen AG)
Die Regierung in Moskau droht, die Werke zu enteignen, wenn sie nicht wieder anlaufen.Diese Drohung muss man ernst nehmen.
Eigentlich wollten Sie Ihren Absatz 2022 leicht steigern. Ist das noch zu halten?Unser Ausblick hängt von der weiteren Entwicklung ab. Enden die Kriegshandlungen schnell, könnten wir durchaus noch ein ordentliches Jahr hinlegen.
>> Read here: Annual balance sheet from Volkswagen: Porsche again beats everyone in the group
Could the high fuel prices at least accelerate the breakthrough of electromobility? We don’t need higher fuel prices, demand is already high. The e-car is already competitive with petrol prices of 1.30 euros per liter.
In view of the crisis, does VW have to rethink its geographical positioning? Yes, of course we are concerned. We see that investors are currently looking for growth opportunities outside of Europe. We have to position ourselves even more broadly worldwide.
You are unlikely to want to strengthen yourself in China. The market already accounts for 40 percent of VW sales. A cluster risk. I don’t see it that way. We must be present in China. The Chinese economy will continue to grow, and China is also becoming more and more relevant in terms of technology for the car world, keywords being networked cars and autonomous driving. Our presence in China is also extremely important for the future.
VW boss wants to achieve a ten percent market share in the USA
Beijing could practice closing ranks with Moscow. That doesn’t worry you? Of course we are concerned about geopolitical developments. But the major mobility growth regions remain China and the USA.
Let’s talk about the USA. After a decade of losses, you made a profit of 200 million euros here last year. What’s next? Growth prospects in the USA are currently much better than in Europe. At around eight percent, our market share for e-cars is already twice as high as for combustion engines. Here we are number two behind Tesla. But overall we are still much too small here. We need a significantly higher market share to play a real role. We are currently at four percent. We aim for ten percent.
VW had a dusty image in the US for a long time. Now you are presenting the ID.Buzz in Austin, the new electric version of the classic VW bus. What are you hoping for from it?The Buzz is our most important product for emotionally charging the VW brand. In the USA, but also worldwide. The car has cult status. The fact that it’s finally here is also a personal success for me. I was already promoting the Buzz when I came to Volkswagen. It’s a sensational hit with the people here in Austin!
ID.Buzz
The VW boss sees the launch of the electric bus as a “personal success”.
(Photo: dpa)
In your factory in Chattanooga, Tennessee, you are already producing the ID.4 and assembling the batteries that SKI supplies for the car. Do you also want to make the Buzz or other electric cars there? We haven’t made a decision yet. But one thing is clear: we want to grow in the USA. And since we have invested in the basic technology for e-car production in Chattanooga, we are of course considering which model we will still produce there.
Are you also planning your own battery factories in the USA? Yes, we will definitely have to build more battery factories in the USA for the growth in electronics. We are covered with the current capacities of our supplier until 2025. But after 2025, additional factories must come. Whether as a joint venture or alone, we are currently clarifying that.
VW offers many models. But in the US, you have a real blank: pickups are the best-selling cars here. Ford started with an e-pickup, the F-150 Lightning. Where is your e-pickup? We are definitely considering offering an e-pickup. The segment is highly attractive and has so far been dominated by the Americans, with classic combustion engines. If the segment is now electrified, also by new competitors like Rivian, we might be able to gain a foothold there too.
VW plant in Chattanooga
“We want to grow in the USA.”
(Photo: AP)
Would a possible own electric pickup compete in the class of large pickups – as a competitor to the F-150 or the GM Silverado? We don’t necessarily have to offer a pickup the size of the F-150. We will be launching a successor to the Amarok together with Ford this year…
… the only VW pick-up so far, a very small model …… and there we are already considering whether it shouldn’t be available in an electric version.
From the US competitors, GM wants to switch completely to electric cars by 2040. Ford wants to continue producing combustion engines for rural America without an end date. Even VW does not mention an exit date. Rightly so. The manufacturers do not decide on the exit. Whether it makes sense to completely phase out the combustion engine also depends on the market in question and how the electricity for e-cars is generated there. In South America, for example, a lot of ethanol is burned, which has a small carbon footprint. There, the combustion engine will continue to make more sense than an electric car in the future. But in Europe we are prepared for a complete exit if the politicians want it. 2035 will be tight. 2040 is possible.
The origin of the electricity is one issue. But what about the huge batteries: shouldn’t they be recycled in the future? Absolutely. At VW, we will not hand out any batteries, we will recycle them all. We are already testing the process in Salzgitter. However, it will still be years before the old batteries come onto the market. At the end of their lifetime in the car, the batteries are used in the home because they still have 70 percent capacity. A battery will last 20 to 30 years before it is recycled.
As punishment for the diesel scandal, VW had to invest two billion dollars in setting up a large network of charging stations. Now you can benefit from “Electrify America”. Actually a joke!
Well, I don’t think that’s a joke at all. It was a legitimate concern of US regulators to advance electrification. Today, the penalty suits us – but only because we have fully geared our strategy to e-mobility. Our charging stations are also open to everyone.
“It will be years before we reach level four of autonomous driving”
What about the future topic of autonomous driving? Tesla relies solely on cameras and artificial intelligence. Experts criticize that additional support systems are needed. Is Tesla at an impasse? It’s too early to tell. The fact is: we need redundancies to make autonomous driving safe in difficult weather and visibility conditions. Laser scanners are good in city traffic, cameras at higher speeds. The regulatory authorities will also demand this. Cars will continue to improve, and it will be years before we reach level four of autonomous driving.
Elon Musk says the self-driving car will come within a year. In purely economic terms, his strategy is working: Tesla customers pay $12,000 for a system that does not yet exist in this form. The autonomous driving is sold to them, in reality they get some assistance systems. And Tesla uses it to generate huge amounts of data. I could well imagine Tesla introducing a redundant second system one day. We shouldn’t underestimate him.
VW boss Herbert Diess in front of the ID.Buzz
In an interview with the Handelsblatt correspondents Katharina Kort and Felix Holtermann.
Is data the actual currency?Yes. Tesla is the only car manufacturer to continuously evaluate thousands of difficult situations, such as those involving pedestrians or wheelchair users, and use them to train its own systems. The larger the vehicle fleet that supplies the data, the easier it is to identify and mitigate rare, dangerous situations. Two million Tesla cars collect data every day.
And how many Volkswagens do that? None at all. So far we have not been able to upload and evaluate critical driving situations. Neither do our competitors, by the way. But this will change. We are already improving our map material with driving data.
… which the card partner Mobileye is happy about.Yes, but we also benefit.
How far along is the work of Argo AI for autonomous driving, i.e. the joint research subsidiary with Ford? At Argo AI we are working together with Ford on robotaxis. Here we want to replace the driver at low speeds and little traffic in US suburbs soon, mainly thanks to laser scanners. However, this approach hardly helps on German autobahns, since the lasers do not have the range. Here we rely on a combination of cameras, radar and lasers. With every software update, our cars take on more driving tasks – even if human drivers will certainly still be needed in 2030. The main developer here is the VW software subsidiary Cariad.
Herbert Diess (right) and Tesla boss Elon Musk
“We don’t talk as often as we used to.”
(Photo: picture alliance/dpa)
The software was a problem child for a long time. At the start of the ID.3, the on-board system caused disappointment. Will there be similar problems with the ID.4 and the ID.Buzz? No, the latest software works great – many people who have tested the ID.Buzz also tell us that. When I started, VW was completely backward when it came to software, but that has changed. The software issues are fixed, we now offer over-the-air updates from the start. This is a system break: In the past, only our dealers had customer contact. Now our developers get continuous direct feedback. We are in the most exciting time for the auto industry. The car is becoming the most complex software product in the world, full of artificial intelligence. I am very happy how quickly our teams learn and improve.
Stellantis gets its core software from Google. This is not a strategy for VW, the software has to come from us. It is highly security-critical, I don’t want to wait for a third party for updates.
“We take the competition from Tesla very seriously”
How much money do you want to earn in the car with the VW App Store? That’s not a criterion for us. Apple also made no profit in the first five years with the App Store. We earn our margin by selling cars. The apps improve the user experience.
Do you still speak to Elon Musk regularly? Yes, but not as often as before. It might also be due to Corona.
Musk wants to open the new Gigafactory in Brandenburg soon and thus open up the European market. Does that worry you? No, but we take the competition very seriously. And I’m glad that we now have a vision for the future of Wolfsburg. A lot of innovative things are happening in Grünheide, and we are dealing with them.
Was it necessary to threaten to cut 30,000 jobs? We are building a new plant in Wolfsburg for two billion euros, this is the only way for VW to have a future. That’s the right sign!
Is Tesla already poaching the best people from you – maybe also with the cooler location? No, we don’t see any shortage. The financial conditions in Wolfsburg and Berlin are comparable. And we already have 5,000 people commuting in from Berlin every day. Our developers are based in many locations anyway.
After the trouble with the supervisory board, things have calmed down since December. They were able to remain in office despite the noise. Will the peace hold in 2022? In my view, there is little reason for new unrest. We’ve achieved a lot since the fall, we’re getting a new plant, the most modern development center in Germany and a new structure at headquarters. I’m very satisfied.
Mr. Diess, thank you very much for the interview.
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