Over the last few years, there has been a notable shift in the direction of the automotive market. The influx of electric cars seems to be a part of everyone’s mandate, leading the charge by a more than fair margin, is the Volkswagen Group. The company that was a few years ago associated with the diesel gate scandal, is now looking to disassociate themselves almost entirely from combustion powered vehicles. The company already has a barrage of 30 electric cars on their way in, all of which will be based on a single platform and will be expected to hit the streets in 2022. Aside from these 30, their flagship brands like Porsche, Audi and Lamborghini will also be debuting new cars based on the Taycan platform. The recently introduced Porsche Taycan and the Audi e-tron GT are likely to both be based on this performance-oriented platform.
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Balancing this drive for electric cars with combustion cars is a task, and Volkswagen is not likely to take up the cudgel, with a recent announcement on Bloomberg clarifying that the next generation of combustion cars that is expected to debut in 2026 is likely to be the last generation that they will ever make. Shifting the focus thereafter onto Electric Vehicles completely. Small revisions are likely but don’t expect a new platform or an all-new car any time after 2026. “Our colleagues are working on the last platform for vehicles that aren’t CO2 neutral,” Michael Jost, strategy chief for Volkswagen’s namesake brand, said Tuesday at an industry conference near the company’s headquarters in Wolfsburg, Germany. “We’re gradually fading out combustion engines to the absolute minimum.”
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In the Indian context, although, Volkswagen is still playing it safe with infrastructure still in a very nascent phase, we can only assume that Volkswagen India will wait to see a more well-rounded infrastructure before committing further. It is worth noting that if all-new generations are coming in 2026, they are likely to make their way to India in the following year, giving them time till 2032 (5-year product cycle with a mid-cycle facelift) before they have to make a concrete move.
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