#Volkswagen

Volkswagen has decided to waive up to six months of payments for customers who lost their jobs due to the economic complications of the coronavirus pandemic. Of course, there’s a catch. Customers have to qualify for VW’s expansion of its “Community-Driven Promise” and must have recently purchased a new vehicle, though avenues exist to help existing customers who aren’t brazen enough to buy a new car after a viral outbreak.

The manufacturer previously said it would defer payments up to 90 days for existing Volkswagen Credit (VCI) customers affected by the economic crisis. While most automakers are trying to sweeten the pot while demand is down, deals and relief packages have rolled out pretty gradually. By contrast, VW seems to be doing quite a bit all at once — here’s how one goes about getting into those programs.

Vehicle production is a complex juggling act at the best of times, but industry-shuttering viral pandemics that sweep the globe in a matter of weeks can complicate the process. And aside from its joint-venture operations in China, Volkswagen finds itself, like other automakers, shut out of the business of building cars.

Perhaps ambitiously, the automaker aims to be back online, cranking out cars in the U.S. and Europe by the end of the month.

Powerful tornadoes ripped through the U.S. South and Southeast late Sunday and into the early morning hours of Monday, leaving behind a toll in human lives and property damage that’s still being assessed.

As the country — and world — suffers through the many disruptions borne of the coronavirus pandemic, one can’t forget that more conventional natural disasters, in all their power and fickleness, are capable of wreaking havoc on industries and supply chains, too.

Volkswagen is furloughing around 1,500 assembly workers in Chattanooga, TN. Production is being idled on account of the coronavirus, making VW just one of many brands enacting a temporary shutdown. While the number of employees affected varies between reports, VW-Chattanooga spokeswoman Amanda Plecas said around 2,500 employees will be furloughed on April 11th. The downtime is expected to last roughly four weeks.

“Our primary objective is to protect the financial health of Volkswagen for the benefit of our team as we address the emerging and ongoing impacts of the COVID-19 outbreak on our industry,” Tom du Plessis, president and CEO of Volkswagen Chattanooga, said in a statement. “Right now we have limited visibility on when we will be able to resume production, but we are committed to doing everything we can to preserve jobs. During this time we will be intensely focused on preparing to reopen in a responsible way, ensuring our team has the opportunity to return to work safely and as quickly as practicable.”

If you’re a greenie who loves hauling your compostable tote to the grocery store in search of climate-conscious vegan food, Volkswagen’s U.S. lineup likely leaves a lot to be desired. For now, anyway. The automaker’s domestic offerings are pretty heavily skewed in favor of larger, gas-powered utility vehicles, with the promised lineup of electrics has yet to materialize.

Overseas, VW product news would have this hypothetical buyer up at night, unable to sleep due to all of the cortisol rushing through their bloodstream. Knowing the jump to EVs might be too wide a gap for some, the automaker is readying a range of performance plug-in hybrids to placate the nervous and sell them on the idea of electricity.

“Schläfer” is the German word for sleeper, or so Google tells me (I spent my foreign language education on Spanish, and I can perhaps order in a restaurant using that language. Maybe). Perhaps it should just be changed to 2019 Volkswagen GLI.

Yeah, there are still sleeper cars on the market – and this delightful spin on an already reliable German econobox is one of them.

I’ve found the normal Jetta to be solid, affordable transport. But for those who want to spice up their schnitzel, so to speak, the GLI does the trick nicely. And unlike just about all of the other sporty compacts, include corporate stablemate Golf GTI, it does so without advertising what it is. Your mother-in-law won’t know this is a performance car, unless you dig deep into the throttle. Or downshift in anger to pass a slowpoke.

Imagine the exasperation among the six or so people who would have bought this thing after hearing that the slinky wagon version of the Volkswagen Arteon won’t make it stateside. Imagine!

Yes, it appears that the vehicle previewed in a mess of alluring spy shots is not en route to the United States in a fleet of USAF C-17s, part of an all-out effort to get desirable product to the most receptive market as quickly as possible.

As dry cleaning tycoon George Jefferson once said, “In politics, lies are called promises.” Automotive purists surely hope that lesson doesn’t apply to Volkswagen’s pledge to hang on to manual transmissions for dear life.

While the automaker says it has no inherent desire to go the two-pedal-only route, it makes clear that the ball is entirely in the customer’s court.

Volkswagen CEO Herbert Diess knows the viral headwinds facing his company won’t ease in a few weeks, nor will the need to curtail production in the face of rampant coronavirus infections.

Following a week that saw the auto giant idle production in Europe and the United States, Diess said the temporary plant shutdowns are just the beginning. His words no doubt echo the thoughts of most, if not all, Western auto execs.

With reports of factory shutdowns now being the norm, Volkswagen and Toyota have predictably decided to idle facilities in Europe to mitigate the negative influence of the novel coronavirus. VW Group had already made plans to temporarily close assembly lines in Italy, Portugal, Slovakia and Spain. But said that the entirety of Europe will probably be affected this month.

Toyota was singing a similar song on Tuesday morning, saying it would suspend production in France and Portugal this week. Considering the sameness of these virus-related cancelations, we’ll not bore you with any recaps — you know how we got here. Instead, here’s the gist of the manufacturers’ respective strategies:

Volkswagen Group’s transition toward electric vehicles has been no secret. Since getting busted with software designed to defeat emissions testing five years ago, the manufacturer has trumpeted the merits of electrification at every opportunity. Still, some continue to wonder how an EV-dominant world will work, expressing concerns that peak charging hours could stress national energy grids past the breaking point.

One proposed solution is to use the connectivity available in modern cars to take power from the grid only when surplus energy is available, while feeding electricity back into it during peak draw hours. Michael Jost, VW’s head of product strategy, said this was something the automaker has been working on.

Automakers are doing their best to keep the lights on in Europe as a rapidly spreading coronavirus pandemic disrupts supply chains and sends workers and staff into quarantine. It’s proving to be a difficult task.

As a new week dawns, numerous automakers have announced plant shutdowns, with Europe’s arguably most famous factory on the verge of going dark itself. Fiat Chrysler isn’t even limiting the scope of its shutdown — the majority of its assembly sites in that continent are closed, effective immediately.

Refreshed for the 2021 model year, the successful Volkswagen Atlas doesn’t change what consumers already like — and part of that strategy means keep its entry price static. Donning a revamped front and rear fascia that mimics its slightly shorter two-row sibling, the Atlas Cross Sport, the midsize crossover again starts at $32,656 after destination.

That price gets you into a front-drive S powered by a carryover 2.0-liter turbo four. Should your wishes include all-wheel drive, expect to find a lot more choice.

What happens to an OEM that may have been caught napping while its competitors race to fill every possible niche with crossovers?

It takes its three-row crossover, lops off the third row and some rear space, gives it a name that plays off the existing moniker, and puts it out there.

Hence we have the 2020 Volkswagen Atlas Cross Sport, which shares its platform with the Atlas (the wheelbases are even the same) but loses about three inches of length and a bit more than two inches of height while offering seating for just five.

An electric crossover that will eventually find a home in Tennessee rolled into the online spotlight Tuesday. With the Geneva Motor Show scrapped over fears of the growing coronavirus epidemic, VW opted to show off the ID.4’s near-production sheet metal on the web.

The vehicle that began life as the shadowy and annoyingly named ID Crozz has finally embraced its new name. So, what can VW offer with its upcoming compact CUV?