Volkswagen has outlined a plan to strengthen its place in China with an all-new platform for reasonably priced electrical automobiles. The platform will probably be based mostly on native parts.
The information was shared on Friday by China chief Ralf Brandstaetter in the course of the opening a brand new EV growth and procurement middle—Volkswagen Group China Expertise Firm (VCTC) in Hefei. An funding of round $1.1 billion within the VCTC is anticipated to create over 2,000 jobs.
In line with Reuters, Volkswagen will develop a brand new entry-level, China-specific platform, presently referred to as the “A Fundamental Platform.” The main target is on decreasing prices, partially via utilizing a good larger ratio of native parts than within the case of the present manufacturing of the MEB-based fashions in China (ID.3, ID.4, ID.6, and ID.7).
The brand new platform will probably be derived from the Modular Electrical Drive Toolkit (MEB) and is anticipated to be prepared in 2026—a few third sooner than initially anticipated—due to the VCTC.
Ralf Brandstaetter defined that the Chinese language electrical automobile market was very “price-sensitive”, which requires optimizing prices. Let’s recall that the Volkswagen model is now not the best-selling model in China (BYD surpassed VW in late 2022), principally due to reducing gasoline automotive gross sales (EVs are a small a part of the model’s quantity and grew slower than anticipated).
Value cuts of the Volkswagen ID.3 mannequin in China already allowed VW to extend the gross sales quantity from a mean of two,200 items per thirty days to round 10,000 per thirty days (in July-October).
The brand new platform targets the entry-level phase with a value vary of $19,570 (140,000 CNY) and 170,000 CNY ($23,760). This may be fairly attention-grabbing.
In line with the report, the plan is to introduce 4 fashions based mostly on the brand new platform and produce them via the present joint ventures with SAIC and FAW, that are additionally producing the MEB-based fashions.
On high of that, beginning in 2026, Volkswagen hopes to launch two further all-electric fashions, developed in partnership with XPeng. In complete, there could be six new fashions.
Earlier than that, by 2026, Volkswagen is anticipated to launch 10 new all-electric automobiles globally, in addition to enhance the velocity of launching new automobiles.