Photo: Volkswagen
Twitter became the place to be when it comes to automotive news. After Elon Musk elected that platform as Tesla’s PR department, other CEOs followed his lead. RJ Scaringe has been sharing a lot there about Rivian, but Herbert Diess also tweets a lot. His latest message there announced a new strategy for the Volkswagen group that will be called New Auto.
In the video he shared on Twitter, there is very little about what these new guidelines will bring. It is also unclear if it will be one more step to the “Accelerate” strategy announced on March 5, 2021. It could be an entirely new idea, which is quite unlikely for a legacy automaker such as the Volkswagen group. Whatever will be revealed must have been planned months ago.
What the little video released by Diess states is that “we design, we engineer, we code, we produce.” Apart from the coding part, all else was pretty much what Volkswagen already did for eons, but these words seem to have a more profound sense to them.
Volkswagen has always designed, engineered, and produced cars relying heavily on what suppliers had to offer. The company did not care to develop its own solutions until Tesla came up with stuff such as the Octovalve and the Super Manifold that Sandy Munro praises so much. In other words, the New Auto strategy may be closely related to verticalization.
If that is really the case, it will be a bold answer to a recent video in which Munro said that was the way Volkswagen and other legacy automakers should follow to catch up with Tesla.
Working with off-the-shelf components only makes sense for mature technologies, in which suppliers already know what to offer and who to sell these solutions to. Before that, car manufacturers will have to lead the way and present the components they need for the electric mobility shift. We’ll confirm if that is the New Auto message on July 13.
What the little video released by Diess states is that “we design, we engineer, we code, we produce.” Apart from the coding part, all else was pretty much what Volkswagen already did for eons, but these words seem to have a more profound sense to them.
The mobility revolution starts now!
— Herbert Diess (@Herbert_Diess) July 7, 2021
Join us for the presentation of our new #VWGroup Strategy #NEWAUTO!
???????? Online on 13 July at 1:30 p.m. (CEST)
Tune in here ??https://t.co/gS6Til1QS0 pic.twitter.com/JiXbib1YyW
Volkswagen has always designed, engineered, and produced cars relying heavily on what suppliers had to offer. The company did not care to develop its own solutions until Tesla came up with stuff such as the Octovalve and the Super Manifold that Sandy Munro praises so much. In other words, the New Auto strategy may be closely related to verticalization.
If that is really the case, it will be a bold answer to a recent video in which Munro said that was the way Volkswagen and other legacy automakers should follow to catch up with Tesla.
Working with off-the-shelf components only makes sense for mature technologies, in which suppliers already know what to offer and who to sell these solutions to. Before that, car manufacturers will have to lead the way and present the components they need for the electric mobility shift. We’ll confirm if that is the New Auto message on July 13.
Google News