The Volkswagen Group is “quite confident" that it can deliver €25,000 (£22,000) electric cars from the Skoda and Volkswagen brands, chief financial officer Arno Antlitz has said.
Volkswagen revealed the ID 2all concept in March, previewing a Polo-size EV that targets an entry price of around £22,000. This is significantly cheaper than any mainstream EV currently on the market, the UK’s cheapest EV (excluding the Citroën Ami quadricycle) being the £26,995 MG 4 EV.
Volkswagen also announced that it's working “full steam ahead” on a sub-€20,000 (£17,000) entry-level electric model, expected to be named the ID 1.
Skoda is set to copy each model in crossover form, targeting the same price points.
Asked at the Financial Times Future of the Car summit whether these prices were still possible and whether the cars could be built profitably, Antlitz said: “For the time being, we're quite confident that we can achieve that price point.
"There's a lot of innovations coming in the technical side. This car will have the first in-house battery cells from our Valencia plant. We're just ramping up; we will have much more scale by then.
“[We have also seen a slight] improvement or relief on the raw material cost. Look at lithium: it came down. Nickel came down. So from this perspective, we're quite confident that we can achieve that €25,000 target and at the same time have a decent margin.”
Antlitz hinted that the Volkswagen Group’s ownership of battery designs and manufacturing would be critical, saying that it would be a “decisive factor” in terms of battery availability and cost.
Volkswagen brand boss Thomas Schäfer previously told Autocar that the economies of scale planned – with the new MEB Entry platform spawning more affordable EVs from Cupra as well as Volkswagen and Skoda – would further help to cut costs.
Join the debate
Add your comment
Yep.
Can you predict the future?, nobody can predict what the global economy will be like in the coming months, so putting forward a statement for this price is a bit of a gamble,so, yes, I'd wait a couple of years, and until semiconductor and development of lighter batteries comes down in price there's not going to much confidence in buying.
Can tell the future can we?, no, well neither can car makers, at best it's a guesswork,until they can reduce battery weight to ICE Car levels or reduce battery production costs then cheap family transport will be thirty-ish grand, and, yes I'm guessing.
Why make statements like this? Even if it was true, anyone who believes it just isn't going to buy one of Volksagen's £30k plus now. Surely it makes sense to wait a year or two and purchase something altogether more affordable.
And even if it could deliver a small EV at this price point it would not make commercial sense. Cars are priced at what the market will accept, not what they cost to build.
LP, I would give them the benefit of the doubt re the 22k EV. If you look at the VW brand portfolio it is essential that they are able to produce EV's at that price point. Many of us have posted that not everyone can afford the 50-100k EV's that seem to plague Autocar's reviews. And VW needs the economies of scale that come from shifting hundreds of thousands of low cost EV's. As always with these announcements it is short on details. When will I be able to walk into a VW showroom and buy one for 22k would be my first question?
All I can say is thank god for Audi because every other car in the VW group is a rebadged VW that actually manages to look better than the VW. VWs are over rated boring cars.