VW Plans Mass Culling of Combustion Cars, Loftier Margins

Practically every automaker on the planet has begun signaling a desire to change with the times by collectively revising their business strategies. The new hotness involves lower volumes, higher margins, and electric vehicles with the ability to push connected services allowing manufacturers to charge you piecemeal for just about every feature imaginable.

While Volkswagen Group has been at the forefront of those trends since the 2015 Dieselgate scandal helped force its hand, it often suggested that the shift to EVs would be a boon to low-income families. It was hardly the only automaker to make such promises, nor has it been the first to break them after deciding that perhaps there’s more money to be made with premium vehicles. VW has decided that its ideal strategy involves culling internal combustion vehicles by 60 percent over the next eight years and focusing on higher-margin products yielding superior profitability.

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  • Ted Bryant Agree with Mikey.Manual. Any manual transmission car. 1) can't text-and-drive, 2) forces driver to pay attention, 3) perfect security because most thieves can't drive stick, 4) fun to drive, 5) friends won't drive the car (they can't drive stick), 6) compression start -- never get stuck, and 7) will always be able to drive any vehicle anywhere. Did this for both kids -- after a couple weeks of complaining, they finally got to it, and now only drive manual. And they are both great drivers. But their friends do poke them for driving stick -- "oh neat - a manual. do you bake your own bread and sew your own clothes too..."
  • Mikey My youngest girl ( now 48 ) dated a guy that had a Beretta with a stick shift. The Dude liked Beer and weed. too much for my liking..I borrowed my buddy's stick shift Chevette and give her short course on driving a manual .. I told her if the new BF has more than 2 beer or any weed ..You drive ...I don't care how many times you stall it, or or of you smoke the clutch . She caught on quite well ,and owned a succession of stick shift vehicles...An as an added bonus she dumped the guy.
  • Blueice "Due to regulation/govt backing, China is poised to dominate BEV/battery production, just as they do solar panel production, drone production, etc.Taiwan dominates production of certain types of chips due to regulation/govt backing and we saw how precarious such a situation is (especially with the PRC increasingly becoming aggressive towards Taiwan).That's why regulation/govt backing is aiming to build up local chip manufacturing."BD2, these businesses and or industries are not free market enterprises, buttcorporatist, bent on destroying their competitors with the use of governmentalunits to create monopolies. How safe are world consumers when the preponderance of computer chipsare made in one jurisdiction. Do you what Red China controlling any industry ??And it is well known, concentrated markets control leads to higher prices to end users.
  • Master Baiter I told my wife that rather than buying my 13YO son a car when he turns 16, we'd be better off just having him take Lyft everywhere he needs to go. She laughed off the idea, but between the cost of insurance and an extra vehicle, I'd wager that Lyft would be a cheaper option, and safer for the kid as well.
  • Master Baiter Toyota and Honda have sufficient brand equity and manufacturing expertise that they could switch to producing EVs if and when they determine it's necessary based on market realities. If you know how to build cars, then designing one around an EV drive train is trivial for a company the size of Toyota or Honda. By waiting it out, these companies can take advantage of supply chains being developed around batteries and electric motors, while avoiding short term losses like Ford is experiencing. Regarding hybrids, personally I don't do enough city driving to warrant the expense and complexity of a system essentially designed to recover braking energy.