Photo: Volkswagen
Volkswagen has pledged to be an all-electric marque by 2035, and that decision has raised some questions. Among those questions is what will happen to the GTI models, as well as what will be of the R cars. Well, thanks to a recent interview, we now know what VW plans to do with its R range.
Instead of slowly eliminating the R models from the portfolio as it gears up to sell more and more EVs, Volkswagen is planning to make those vehicles electric. It is not clear at this point whether all the models in the R range will live to become electric vehicles, but there is time to determine that.
The entire idea is that all of VW's R-badged vehicles will be all-electric y 2030, as Reinhold Ivenz, the boss of the R division, has confirmed in an interview with Autocar.
The same official had noted that several electric R models are in the planning stages, but that does not mean that much today because they may just be evaluated for the possibility of being evaluated.
In case you are not aware of how things work in the automotive industry, before a vehicle is released in showrooms and sold in some markets in the world, it will need approval from the company's board, and getting there these days involves receiving approval from multiple departments.
For example, the sales and marketing departments will have to take a look at it and decide if they can sell it, as well as make a guess of how many they could sell each year.
Several other departments will have to set a budget cap for development, as well as an estimate if the company manages to make money on the new vehicle.
Mind you, the homologation procedure for a new type of vehicle approval costs multiple millions of euros—with double-digit values for current-gen vehicles, which is why no company can afford to have multiple models that were expensive to develop, but do not fare well in terms of sales.
Volkswagen has previously had a few models that fit that bill, such as the Phaeton, but it will be interesting to see if the same will happen with performance-oriented electric vehicles.
Their advantage would come in the shared platform with other VW cars, as is the case today, but there will be development costs for performance-oriented versions, especially if they involve more powerful motors, which require repeating the homologation procedure. In retrospect, this is what the R division was doing 11 years ago.
The entire idea is that all of VW's R-badged vehicles will be all-electric y 2030, as Reinhold Ivenz, the boss of the R division, has confirmed in an interview with Autocar.
The same official had noted that several electric R models are in the planning stages, but that does not mean that much today because they may just be evaluated for the possibility of being evaluated.
In case you are not aware of how things work in the automotive industry, before a vehicle is released in showrooms and sold in some markets in the world, it will need approval from the company's board, and getting there these days involves receiving approval from multiple departments.
For example, the sales and marketing departments will have to take a look at it and decide if they can sell it, as well as make a guess of how many they could sell each year.
Several other departments will have to set a budget cap for development, as well as an estimate if the company manages to make money on the new vehicle.
Mind you, the homologation procedure for a new type of vehicle approval costs multiple millions of euros—with double-digit values for current-gen vehicles, which is why no company can afford to have multiple models that were expensive to develop, but do not fare well in terms of sales.
Volkswagen has previously had a few models that fit that bill, such as the Phaeton, but it will be interesting to see if the same will happen with performance-oriented electric vehicles.
Their advantage would come in the shared platform with other VW cars, as is the case today, but there will be development costs for performance-oriented versions, especially if they involve more powerful motors, which require repeating the homologation procedure. In retrospect, this is what the R division was doing 11 years ago.
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