Tag: VW

Group-wide deliveries fall in April

The Volkswagen Group delivered 866,400 vehicles in April, 6,6 percent below the figure for April 2018. In the month under review, all core regions recorded declines in the overall market. This was a result of the sluggish economy in some markets and the tense geopoliti-cal situation in other markets. Dr. Christian Dahlheim, Head of Volkswagen… Continue reading Group-wide deliveries fall in April

BMW CEO faces criticism for bad Q1 results and lack of ambitious electric strategy

BERLIN, May 16 (Xinhua) — Harald Krueger, chief executive officer (CEO) of the German luxury car maker BMW, faced a tough audience of shareholders at BMW's Annual General Meeting (AGM) in Munich on Thursday.
“Currently, only bad news comes from BMW,” said Janne Werning from the German fund company Union Investment at the AGM.
Last week, the German car manufacturer reported its first loss in a decade in the main automotive division of BMW in the first quarter of 2019.
The German car maker's operating profits (EBIT) fell by 78 percent to 589 million euros (658.5 million U.S. dollars) in Q1 of 2019, compared to 2.7 billion euros in Q1 of 2018.
BMW's profit margin in the automotive business has been below the company's target value of 8 percent for months.
Although the Munich carmaker sold more cars last year than in the previous year, profit before taxes fell to 9.8 billion euros and are expected to fall below 8.9 billion euros this year.
Daniela Bergdolt, vice presid..

Ford revs up to sell hybrids with appeal of speed and power

DETROIT (Reuters) – Ford Motor Co is turning to the automotive marketer’s time-tested themes, speed and power, to sell a new generation of gasoline-electric hybrid vehicles to mass market customers. FILE PHOTO: A 2020 Ford Explorer Hybrid is hooked up to a boat trailer to demonstrate towing power in Dearborn, Michigan, U.S., May 15, 2019.… Continue reading Ford revs up to sell hybrids with appeal of speed and power

Mercedes-Benz lays out plan for carbon-neutral future

2020 Mercedes-Benz EQC Edition 1886
Mercedes-Benz's CEO-apparent Ola Källenius laid out a plan Monday, just after the Norway launch of its EQC electric SUV, that outlines the development of an entire “carbon-neutral” passenger-car fleet.

Källenius, currently the head of product development at Mercedes, has been named future Chairman of the Board of management of Daimler, the parent company of Mercedes-Benz starting later this year.

Part of the plan, called Vision 2039, calls to make half the company's models plug in by 2030—either plug-in hybrids or all-electric vehicles.

READ THIS: First Mercedes-Benz EQC rolls off assembly line in Germany

According to a transcript of his speech, Källenius said, “Let’s be clear what this means for us: a fundamental transformation of our company within less than three product cycles. That’s not much time when you consider that fossil fuels have dominated our business since the invention of the car by Carl Benz and Gottlieb Daimler some 130 years ago. But as a company founded by engineers, we believe technology can also help to engineer a better future.”

He laid out plans to electrify the company's vans, trucks, and buses as well as its cars, and said the Mercedes is focusing first on building better electric cars, by bringing “EV performance up and costs down,” he said.

Källenius also doubled-down on Daimler's commitment to developing hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles. “There’s also room and need to continue to work on other solutions,” he said, “for example, the fuel cell or eFuels…. Today, no one knows for sure which drivetrain mix will best serve our customers’ needs 20 years from now. That’s why we encourage policy makers to pave the way for tech neutrality: Let’s fix the target, but not the means to achieve it.”

He noted that in addition to electric buses, the company will also build city buses with fuel cells.

READ MORE: Mercedes joins forces with BMW to build an electric ecosystem

Källenius pointed to the company's car-sharing efforts such as Car2Go as a means to help customers reduce their carbon footprint, and said the company will be making new efforts to encourage its customers who buy EVs to charge them using renewable energy. The company launched an effort in March, in conjunction with BMW's Reach Now, to provide clean power to chargers, and smart home chargers, similar programs at Tesla and Volkswagen.

Of course, electric cars are only as carbon-neutral as the factories that build them. The company plans to convert all of its European factories to renewable energy by 2022, starting with an extension of its main plant in Sindelfingen, Germany, and including the factory in Bremen that builds the EQC and the Kamenz factory in Saxony where the EQC's battery is built.

By 2039, the year that gives the plan its name, the company intends to propagate the changes throughout its worldwide factories as well as its suppliers, using incentives as motivation.

Volkswagen says EV batteries to last “the life of the car”

Volkswagen ID Buzz Concept
In an announcement last month, Volkswagen joined Nissan and Tesla as the only automakers to explicitly warranty not just the batteries in its cars but specifically how much life it expects them to retain.

Frank Blome, the head of VW's Center of Excellence in Battery Cells, said in an outward facing internal marketing interview that the company expects the battery packs in its upcoming line of ID cars to last “the life of the cars,” he said.

READ THIS: Here's the battery pack behind VW's global electric-vehicle push

Of course, for a key component of the car that costs five figures to replace it's an open question whether a dead battery becomes a self-fulfilling condition of a dead car.
Volkswagen has previously said—at several points—that its batteries will retain 70 percent of their original capacity for 8 years or 100,000 miles. That's the standard time frame for an EV battery warranty, though not all companies go so far as to provide a definition of how much capacity the battery needs to retain at that point.

CHECK OUT: Volkswagen details the foundation for 10 million electric vehicles

Batteries for the Audi E-tron quattro, the first all-electric car from the Volkswagen Group's luxury division come from Korean supplier LG Chem. LG's South Korean rival, SK Innovation, which was just sued by LG Chem at the International Trade Commission, will supply batteries for VW's new products in Europe as well as the U.S.

SKI is building new battery factories in Hungary and the U.S. state of Georgia to supply the batteries. In China, VW will rely on local batteries from CATL.

DON'T MISS: VW Group has nailed down $25 billion of batteries for electric cars, it said today

Blome confirmed that Volkswagen continues to work with Silicon Valley startup QuantumScape to develop solid-state batteries for its next generation of batteries for electric cars sometime between 2025 and 2030.

He also affirmed that he expects VW's European Battery Union partnership with Swedish battery maker Northvolt to produce more and better batteries, and to promote more battery production in Europe. The EBU is expected to begin research in 2020. “This new consortium will cover the entire battery value chain,” he said. “The primary aim is to gain broader expertise in battery cell production.”

Volkswagen at the 40th International Vienna Motor Symposium: autonomous vehicles, hybrid drives and the start of a new era in electric mobility

With the introduction of its 48-volt mild hybrid drive system, Volkswagen is entering the next phase of the large-scale electrification of its fleet Volkswagen will be providing an in-depth insight into its modular electric drive matrix for the very first time The next step will see Volkswagen working to advance the development of highly automated… Continue reading Volkswagen at the 40th International Vienna Motor Symposium: autonomous vehicles, hybrid drives and the start of a new era in electric mobility