VW Says They Will Have EVs as Good as Tesla For Half the Price by 2020

[Stormysaga + 62]

The VW Group has made several ambitious claims about its effort to go electric since it was hit by the Dieselgate scandal. Now they make arguably their most ambitious claim yet: that they’ll have electric vehicles as good as Tesla’s for half the price by 2020.

Last year, VW CEO Diess said that ‘ he sees Tesla as their main competitor.  VW hasn’t confirmed it yet, but they have been talking about $28,000, which is less expensive than the Model 3, but not half the price. The vehicle is expected to hit Europe and China in 2020 and come to North America later.

 

[Adam Varga + 123]

VW will build EVs with 300 miles range and 0-60 sub 6 seconds, OTA updates and autopilot for about  $20k?  

Can't wait to see that. I'm sure they're not exaggerating. 

[Brian W + 78]

I think he didn't cleverly quantify the number. He probably means half of the price of a 70k Tesla. I don't think they will be selling a $17.5k VW EV anytime soon. Unless they are planning to sell used Tesla cars for half of the price. 

[Vlad Kovalenko + 115]

This is more realistic to happen. Tesla continues to grow becoming industry standard with some companies eventually becoming its rivals, while some legacy companies will start to fade away because they didn't react soon enough. It seems like other carmakers forget that Tesla will become better with age due to software updates. 

[Brian W + 78]

This is more likely to happen. In 2020 Tesla car prices would come down anyways. And in 2021 VW will be found cheating on battery size. It's hard to get rid of old habits. 
 

[BlackTortoise + 103]

They are planning to make a car in 2 years that matches the specs of a car launched last year. Not sure if that’s a good selling point. This Diess is living in his own wonderland.

[NatGasDude + 94]

I'm kind of concerned that 5% of batteries are actually being recycled, recycling batteries is far more expensive than mining/making new ones (not economically feasible, will require government mandates like those in EU and China that require EV manufacturers to take responsibility for end to end battery waste), estimates of up to 11 million tons of spent lithium ion batteries by 2030.

Hope that they can solve this.

[DA? + 301]

11 hours ago, NatGasDude said:

I'm kind of concerned that 5% of batteries are actually being recycled, recycling batteries is far more expensive than mining/making new ones (not economically feasible, will require government mandates like those in EU and China that require EV manufacturers to take responsibility for end to end battery waste), estimates of up to 11 million tons of spent lithium ion batteries by 2030.

Hope that they can solve this.

Again economics come to play in this, in the past the volume and density (batteries where scattered all over the place) made it difficult. With a massive increase of batteries been produced this equation changes and high volumes make it far more viable. Although not sure where the figures come in for 11 million tons of spent lithium ion batteries by 2030 comes from. The great thing about EV batteries that on the whole are lasting far longer than originally expected is they have a long term use in fixed storage, further increasing their usage life by many years.

[DA? + 301]

16 hours ago, Brian W said:

I think he didn't cleverly quantify the number. He probably means half of the price of a 70k Tesla. I don't think they will be selling a $17.5k VW EV anytime soon. Unless they are planning to sell used Tesla cars for half of the price. 

Probably try and fudge the numbers again like in their 2016 presentation not comparing Telsa's ranges in the same way.

[Marina Schwarz + 1,576]

On 10/26/2018 at 8:00 PM, Adam Varga said:

VW will build EVs with 300 miles range and 0-60 sub 6 seconds, OTA updates and autopilot for about  $20k?  

Can't wait to see that. I'm sure they're not exaggerating. 

Thanks for sparing me the effort to write this.

And they say Musk makes unrealistically grand statements, eh?