The forest web site in Blythewood, South Carolina at present being cleared to make room for Scout Motors’ future electrical truck and SUV manufacturing unit is a really huge deal on a number of fronts.
It’s the most important improvement the area has ever seen, estimated to convey some 4,000 jobs to supply 200,000 automobiles yearly all for a projected $4.2 billion financial impression. It’s one other feather in South Carolina’s manufacturing cap, following Volvo and BMW and turning the state right into a burgeoning carmaking powerhouse.
And for Scout Motors’ mum or dad firm, the Volkswagen Group, it’s nothing wanting a coup d’état; not simply the revival of an iconic American model, however a ground-up effort to make automobiles designed and engineered for People.
None of this gravity is misplaced on Scott Keogh, the fast-talking New York native picked to guide the trouble. The final time I noticed Keogh, he was the Volkswagen Group’s American CEO, and he was exhibiting me the then-new ID.4—one other automotive essential to each VW’s electrical targets and enlargement within the U.S. market.
However as essential because the ID.4 is, it’s nearly a drop within the bucket in comparison with the impression Scout Motors hopes to make when the vehicles enter manufacturing in late 2026.
“On the finish of the day, ID.4 was a product, a product we cherished,” Keogh instructed me on the manufacturing unit groundbreaking final week. “Right here, we’re ranging from a very clean slate.”
Keogh in entrance of a basic Scout. Photograph: VW
A clean slate could also be precisely what the Volkswagen Group wants because it makes an attempt to develop into an all-electric automaker whereas reckoning with intense competitors from China’s automakers on its house turf, and the truth that it’s by no means actually cracked the American automotive market the way in which it’s wished to.
That final half is strictly what Scout Motors goals to repair.
How Worldwide Harvester Turned The Volkswagen Group’s Scout Motors
The unique Scout was an SUV earlier than SUVs have been even a factor. Constructed by Illinois-based heavy gear producer Worldwide Harvester between 1960 and 1980, it predated well-known 4x4s just like the Ford Bronco by years and stays immensely in style with off-road fans and basic automotive collectors even immediately.
After buying Worldwide Harvester’s successor firm Navistar in 2020, the VW Group discovered itself in possession of the Scout trademark. That obtained the wheels turning: what may very well be achieved with this well-known model? Executives in Germany “wished a much bigger presence in North America,” Keogh mentioned, “and Scout had that credibility.”
To show the Scout model was up for the duty, Keogh and different members of the Scout group introduced board members to an airport hangar divided into three sections. Every had a unique focus, together with a lesson within the model’s U.S. heritage and a few early scale fashions—and, crucially, a marketing strategy. No matter they mentioned in that hangar, it labored. “There was pleasure, and it simply rolled from there,” Keogh mentioned.
That pleasure yielded one of the vital bold plans the corporate has ever executed, however it might be a obligatory one.
The VW Group is the second-biggest carmaker on the planet behind Toyota, however that isn’t one thing we see within the U.S. The corporate instructions some 25% of the brand new automotive market in Europe and 14% in China; in North America, that quantity is just about 4%.
Although VW has been right here longer than every other “import” model, and the VW Group sees good-looking gross sales and earnings from luxurious divisions like Audi, Porsche and Bentley, it has by no means made the sort of vehicles People purchase in quantity—specifically, huge, succesful vehicles and SUVs.
A extra watered-down model of the Scout may need yielded a sub-brand for Volkswagen, or a re-bodied ID.4 with some retro-truck taste. However the firm determined that wasn’t sufficient, and as an alternative, Scout Motors needed to be a sort of startup effort contained in the VW Group: a brand new manufacturing unit designed to benefit from U.S. tax incentives, and a brand new body-on-frame truck platform constructed from scratch.
Whereas Scout Motors will share appreciable know-how, sources and a few elements from its VW Group cousins, it’s a new and impartial effort. (For context round that 200,000 annual manufacturing purpose, the Volkswagen model offered about 329,000 vehicles within the U.S. final yr.)
All of that ambition rides on a automobile nobody has seen but, except for some cursory sketches, and whose specs stay utterly unknown. Keogh instructed InsideEVs that the Scout fashions may begin within the high-$40,000 vary, however in any other case they continue to be an enigma till their debut this summer time.
However Keogh gave some hints in Blythewood: “This automotive, this platform, this every little thing was designed to compete right here,” he mentioned.
An SUV, And A Manufacturing unit, Constructed To Final
To take action, they wished to construct a correct SUV with off-roading credentials that lived as much as the Scout identify. “We’re not constructing one thing to navigate the strip malls of America, we’re constructing one thing to navigate America,” Keogh mentioned. (He did later that potential exports to markets like China are a chance as manufacturing ramps up.)
That off-road functionality such as you get within the Bronco or Jeep Wrangler—besides powered by batteries, right here—was key for Scout Motors. That’s why it’s slated to have locking differentials, tons of equipment at launch and precise, bodily buttons as an alternative of display controls.
VW additionally tapped contract agency Magna Steyr, longtime maker of the Mercedes G-Class, to make one thing off-road-ready; that purpose was additionally why modifying an present electrical platform didn’t work.
“We clearly gave this numerous debate,” Keogh mentioned of the plan to go body-on-frame. “We wish to construct one thing that is extremely sturdy and extremely succesful. And I believe Scouts got here from that, so we thought it was good to say, let’s hold that integrity.” The end result ought to be one thing like one in all Rivian’s EVs, or the F-150 Lightning; it additionally is not going to be provided as a hybrid, at the same time as VW has mulled releasing a few of these stateside.
“This is just not a twin, or a brother, or daughter to any of the opposite platforms that we have ever had,” added Jan Spies, Scout Motors’ head of manufacturing and a longtime VW Group manufacturing govt.
That goes for the manufacturing unit as effectively. Spies mentioned the plant will pioneer numerous applied sciences and methods that may very well be used throughout the remainder of the conglomerate. When in comparison with present factories that needed to be transformed for the period of “electromobility,” as Spies put it, this one is extra designed from the get-go with environmental sustainability in thoughts.
“With regards to innovation immediately, we predict it is about making it workable for the subsequent 20, 30 years,” Spies mentioned. “We’re right here in a state the place for instance, water is just not but a useful resource that’s counted as a lot as possibly in Mexico… however will probably be in the future.”
Batteries, Sellers, And The ‘Electrical Slowdown’
However many questions must be answered within the subsequent 2.5 years, supplied the Scout Motors automobiles don’t face any delays.
For one, it’s not recognized the place the vehicles will supply batteries from. Keogh mentioned they received’t come from the SK Innovation plant in Georgia that provides energy cells to the Volkswagen ID.4, saying “they received’t work for a bunch of causes I received’t get into.” In principle, the corporate could have its selection of suppliers as native battery manufacturing scales up throughout North America.
The corporate’s gross sales technique is one other unknown. It’s going to have dealerships, Keogh mentioned, however they won’t be connected to present Volkswagen shops—a minimum of, not by default. And given the conglomerate’s present supplier networks, some model of direct-to-consumer gross sales like Tesla and Rivian feels extraordinarily unlikely. (These VW sellers have already expressed some consternation since Scout Motors might be promoting the sorts of vehicles they’ve wished to promote for years.)
Arguably a much bigger query for Scout Motors could also be what the EV market seems like in 2026. Final week’s manufacturing unit groundbreaking ceremony got here after a yr of file electrical gross sales in America, however one marked by a slowdown in latest months. Furthermore, the president whose insurance policies pushed EV adoption is probably not within the White Home in two years.
“We’re not naive to the headlines,” Keogh mentioned. He added that the problem of transferring EVs in quantity comes down to a few issues: prices, infrastructure and know-how, which means vary, charging occasions and software program. However he sees all three enhancing, even now.
“I believe these three issues are gonna line up fairly effectively,” he mentioned. “In my thoughts, I do not assume salvation means, let’s go let’s return, again, again. I believe salvation is gonna come from continuously innovating and getting higher know-how. I’m an optimist on know-how, and I’m an optimist on American know-how.”
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