The German car manufacturer Volkswagen has announced ambitious investments – over the next five years, the Volkswagen Group plans to invest a total of 180 billion euros in various projects. The funding will be used for a variety of purposes, from securing battery raw materials to digitization, as well as expansion in China and North America.
The automaker’s publicly announced goal is to reduce electric car prices while protecting and increasing its market share. More than two-thirds of this 180 billion will be spent on the development of electrification and digitization. However, Volkswagen’s chief financial officer, Arno Antlitz, has said that the manufacturer could pause some of the investments in the development of batteries if the development of the electric car market is slower than predicted.
In the next couple of years, Volkswagen hopes to significantly expand battery production capacity, as well as conclude contracts for the purchase of raw materials, in order to reduce costs and the final price of machines. This is one of the prerequisites for the manufacturer to be able to fulfill the goal and offer an electric car, the starting price of which is 25 thousand euros.
Also, the representatives of the Volkswagen Group report that the development of software for the group’s luxury brand cars is gradually coming to an end. The CARIAD department created specifically for software development worked on it, but the results were far from optimal. Audi and Porsche even had to delay the launch of several machines due to poor software, it is reported. Volkswagen reports that for the time being, investments in the development of internal combustion engines will continue, but after 2025, investments in this direction will gradually decrease.
