Volkswagen needs to sell electric cars. Many. As many as I can. Next year, European Union emissions regulations threaten significant fines for the company if they do not lower their CO2 records. And that is leading the company to push hard for the client to adopt this new technology.
With all kinds of strategies.
The horses. This is what Martin Sander has compared, Head of Sales, Marketing and Aftersales at Volkswagen from 2024, the combustion car in an interview given to the British media Auto Express. He has done so to exemplify why he believes that bad decisions are being made when it comes to pressuring the adoption of electric cars.
“Do you know when horses were banned? Since when has it been banned to buy horses? You can buy a horse today. But over time, more and more people realized that a vehicle was much better to get from A to B than a horse. Now I look out the window and I don’t see many horses, I mostly see cars.”
With these words, Sander wanted to make it clear that he considers that electric cars are better than combustion cars, but that forcing the customer to switch to electric cars may not be the best option.
Remove the barriers. In his interview, Sander is clear about what Europe should do:
“How can you convince the customer of a new technology if you only talk about the date when it will no longer be allowed to use those vehicles – vehicles that you have been using for the last decades (referring to combustion cars) – anymore? Remove all barriers. Let’s talk about what we need to convince customers: charging infrastructure, talking positively about the advantages of electric cars and the price of energy… over time, more and more customers will be convinced.”
That is to say, Volkswagen’s sales chief is committed to letting the product do the talking and rejects the idea of putting a deadline on combustion engines because, according to him, it should be the market that chooses without political pressures involved.
This position of Sander is not new. Last March he already made statements very similar to Autogazzetean Italian media outlet to which he stressed that prohibiting the technology already present does not help customers view electric cars favorably.
A theory that is not new. How our colleagues collect L’AutomobileFor the German manager, the debate on whether or not brands should jump to electric cars is adulterated since the European Union forces them to change the roadmap they would have followed if the new emissions regulations did not exist.
This position has been repeated by the industry on numerous occasions. Already in 2023, when it seemed that the European Union was moving towards a complete ban on combustion engines, Carlos Tavares, who then directed Stellantis, pointed out that “The electric car by law is not the solution”.
Even within the Volkswagen Group itself, those who only sold electric cars have defended it. Mate Rimac, owner of the company that bears his name that sells electric supercars and that for a few weeks It is no longer under the German umbrellahe assured a long time ago that Their cars were not selling because their customers felt attacked due to the pressure to jump into the combustion car.
Yes, but. Although Sander’s words suggest that the electric car should and can convince yourself to the customer of a combustion car without the political pressures, one would have to wonder if Volkswagen would have invested billions of euros in new platforms, electric cars and factories if the European Union had not previously proposed a ban on combustion engines.
And in the automobile industry, technology has rarely been imposed without political pressure. The truth is that If today we use unleaded gasoline It is because the manufacturers were forced to use catalysts and it ended up being ban the sale of leaded fuel for being too harmful. The Clean Air Act in the United States is now more than 50 years old and if Tesla is still alive it is because there Manufacturers like Toyota were forced to register a minimum of electric cars more than 20 years ago.
They need to sell. However, the fact that the head of Volkswagen sales compares the combustion vehicle with a horse to demonstrate how outdated the proposal is compared to the electric car is not coincidental either.
Last year, the European Union delayed the fines to be applied to all manufacturers that exceeded the limit of 93.6 gr/km of CO2, taking into account the average number of cars sold. For every gram exceeded and car sold, 95 euros were added. This led to fines of around 1,500 million euros for the company..
With the flexibility of the normthe EU will take into account the average emissions per car sold in the 2025-2027 period. That is, the manufacturers were able to pass the first year but they need to compensate it between 2026 and 2027 if they do not want to pay the fines. This forces Volkswagen to sell many more electric vehicles in the remainder until December 2027, which explains its offensive with electric cars under 25,000 euros.
Photo | Volkswagen
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