Volkswagen to electrify entire range by 2030

Volkswagen is the latest car maker to announce a move to electrify its entire range of automobile offerings: The car maker will provide either hybrid or electric versions of every one of its 300 models by 2030, it announced today ahead of the Frankfurt Motor Show in German.

VW’s not the first to make a similar commitment — and in fact Daimler’s Mercedes-Benz announced it was going to do the same by 2022 earlier today. But the Volkswagen Group’s vehicle range is quite a bit larger than Mercedes-Benz’s, which makes this a more significant overall commitment.

By 2025, Volkswagen plans to offer 80 new electric vehicles across its group and sub-brands, which include Audi, Bentley, Bugatti and the Volkswagen brand itself. VW has committed to spend nearly $23 billion U.S. on getting this plan in place via zero emissions technology investment, and it also said it would commit more than $55 billion toward purchasing batteries to provide power for these vehicles.

The news also follows the big announcement from this weekend that China would be banning fossil fuel burning vehicles eventually, joining commitments made by the U.K. and France before. There’s clearly a trend on both the regulatory and the industry side of the equation with regards to electrified vehicles, but there will still be a lot of questions and work to be done in terms of maturing the supply chain and overcoming technology and infrastructure challenges.

Source: AFP