Volkswagen’s division for light commercial vehicles relies on an alliance with Ford USA at robot cars. The negotiations on a stake in the for autonomous driving stated Ford subsidiary Argo are on a good way, said Thomas Sedran, head of the brand Volkswagen commercial vehicles, on Thursday (28. Marz 2019).
At the same time, the change from the pure automaker to the mobilitate service provider with billions in investments is driven forward: in 2019, 1.8 billion euros should be in the development of new mobility services, the conversion of the works and new products.
Autonomous driving to Hannover
With a view to a participation in Argo explained Sedran, conceivable should also be a joint society, which offers mobilitat as a service in the US, Europe and other regions. Volkswagen wool the Group-wide development for autonomous driving in Hannover Bundeln.
Ford and Volkswagen had become the joint development of transporters and pick-ups in mid-January. It should also be suggested in electromobilitat, autonomous cars and mobility services. Experts see alliances gross automakers as a trend-setting for the entire industry. At the end of February, Daimler and BMW were involved in autonomous driving.
Ford is said to build Bullis in Turkey
For the planned alliance of Volkswagen with Ford, the first contract is closed – including the successor of the pick-up Amarok, Sedran said. Further steps should follow in 2019. Transporter for commercial customers could pay as well as a city van. According to reports, the transporter variants of the "Bullis" could be built at Ford in Turkey. Together, both companies have set a total of around 1.2 million light commercial vehicles in 2018.
Volkswagen commercial vehicles delivered around 500 last year.000 vehicles – an increase of 0.4 percent. The division posted according to the information the second best result of its history: Sales amounted to € 11.9 billion at the previous year’s level, but the operating result was from 853 million euros a year earlier to 780 million. The made the brand for example with the difficulties with the new exhaust gas test standard WLTP.
80% of the light VW-NFZ from 2025 electrified
Sedran explained, from 2025, 80 percent of the light commercial vehicles of Volkswagen should be driven by electric or hybrid drive. In the long term, the fuel cell drive with hydrogen continues to pursue, which is more useful for the coarse and heavy commercial vehicles just on a long distance as batteries. Group boss Herbert This was in the fact that the automakers should focus on battery electrical drives alone.
The work in Hannover is designed to make E-cars – 2022 starts the electro- "Bulli" ID Buzz. This costs workplaces, but should be regulated over partial retirement. In Hanover, the hearings could be deleted after up to 4000 places. However, employment protection was agreed until the end of 2028.