The Volkswagen car company still takes the drive components of its electric cars from subcontractors. However, according to what was heard at the Technical Day in Barcelona, this is to change from 2025. The company wants to concentrate the development of new batteries, charging technology and drive components, such as inverters and thermal management systems, under one roof – its own. A British website informs about it Autocar.
Such vertical integration is supposed to facilitate and speed up the development process and ultimately also reduce the price of the car for the customer. “The origin of Volkswagen’s powertrain from a single source offers significant advantages in both efficiency and cost. Optimum combination of individual parts makes it possible to increase efficiency by up to 20 percent,” the British automaker quotes.
Reducing development and production costs as much as possible will be key to making Volkswagen’s smallest electric cars affordable. There is currently talk that the upcoming ID.2 model – whatever it will be called, maybe ID. Golf – should start at just over half a million crowns, which is significantly less than the current smallest electric car from Volkswagen, the ID.3 model. It is now sold here from 1.2 million crowns.
The next generation of the Volkswagen Golf may be a cheap electric car
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“Thanks to the modular tooling principle, we can implement this on anything from small rigs to sports cars with over 500kW and more in the future. The technology is now being developed to be ready for serial production, and will be able to be used in the next generation of the MEB platform,” the British further quote Volkswagen.
It is impossible not to see a hint of the arrival of a very powerful electric car, potentially on par with the current Porsche Taycan or Audi e-tron GT. Whether such a car would bear the logos of Volkswagen or other brands from the group’s portfolio, in addition to the ones mentioned, for example Bentley, we can only guess for now. In the past, Volkswagen also offered very powerful cars, for example the Phaeton or Touareg models with a ten-cylinder diesel engine or W12 petrol engine are worth mentioning.
The next generation of the MEB platform has different names so far, there is talk of MEB Plus or MEB Evo. It is expected to have a higher charging speed, up to 200 kW; the current MEB ends at 170 kilowatts. Acceleration is to be made possible by a new “all-in-one” temperature control system, which, in addition to cooling the drivetrain, also controls the air conditioning in the car.
“Our goal is to achieve a leading position in technology, including in electric mobility. That is why we take over the development of inverters and temperature control systems. In the future, this will make the Volkswagen Group one of the few car manufacturers to offer an overall optimized, complete system,” concluded the spokesperson of the concern.
The traditional meeting of Volkswagens in Austria canceled due to sustainability
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