Photo: Volkswagen
Volkswagen is what you might consider a latecomer to the automotive industry. As a marque, VW was born in 1937 at the orders of Adolf Hitler. That’s four decades or so after the automobile started reshaping the world both east and west of the Atlantic Ocean.
After it somehow survived the war and the years that followed right after, Volkswagen began the expansion that now places it in a dominant position in the industry, challenged perhaps only by Toyota. And just like the present, the future that is currently shaping up should be Volkswagen’s domain too.
Electro-mobility, autonomous driving, new mobility services and digitalization in vehicles are all concepts in their infancy, but this hasn’t stopped the Germans from committing to them with a determination rarely seen in the industry.
This week, the heads of the group have been busy reshaping the strategy for the next five years. Factories are to be retooled, car production reshuffled and billions to be invested in a risky plant to make VW the dominant carmaking species of the future.
Volkswagen said on Friday about a third of the total expenditure planned for the 2019-2023 period is to go into the development of the previously mentioned areas. That amounts to around 44 billion EUR for the period, or on average 8.8 billion for each of the next five years.
“One aim of the Volkswagen Group’s strategy is to speed up the pace of innovation. We are focusing our investments on the future fields of mobility and systematically implementing our strategy,” said in a statement Volkswagen’s CEO Herbert Diess.
Although other carmakers have ambitious projects for the future too, VW’s plan is gargantuan in size. If successful, it might just enable the group to take over the emerging electric car market from pioneers like Tesla and Nissan, and even upset the development of car sharing behemoths supported by BMW and Daimler.
Electro-mobility, autonomous driving, new mobility services and digitalization in vehicles are all concepts in their infancy, but this hasn’t stopped the Germans from committing to them with a determination rarely seen in the industry.
This week, the heads of the group have been busy reshaping the strategy for the next five years. Factories are to be retooled, car production reshuffled and billions to be invested in a risky plant to make VW the dominant carmaking species of the future.
Volkswagen said on Friday about a third of the total expenditure planned for the 2019-2023 period is to go into the development of the previously mentioned areas. That amounts to around 44 billion EUR for the period, or on average 8.8 billion for each of the next five years.
“One aim of the Volkswagen Group’s strategy is to speed up the pace of innovation. We are focusing our investments on the future fields of mobility and systematically implementing our strategy,” said in a statement Volkswagen’s CEO Herbert Diess.
Although other carmakers have ambitious projects for the future too, VW’s plan is gargantuan in size. If successful, it might just enable the group to take over the emerging electric car market from pioneers like Tesla and Nissan, and even upset the development of car sharing behemoths supported by BMW and Daimler.
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