Governments have essentially ordered car companies to produce EVs. Governments don’t have to make a profit; car companies do. From Eric Peters at ericpetersautos.com:
The push to “electrify” everything that rolls is turning out to be a lot like the push to “vaccinate” everyone in that both have turned out to have adverse effects.
VW hasn’t died suddenly – but it is dying.
Chief Financial Officer Arno Antlitz, speaking to thousands of maybe soon-to-be ex-VW employees, said VW has “one maybe two” years to turn things around else there may no longer be a VW in as little as two years from now. The company is reportedly considering shuttering its plants in Germany – a Hail Mary pass to reduce manufacturing/compliance costs. But moving manufacturing operations to places where it costs less to manufacturer things won’t solve VW’s problems because that is not VW’s core problem.
Its core problem is that it bent-the knee to “electrification.”
More finely, that it bent over when it was accused of “cheating” on federal-level emissions certification tests, which the government used to take away VW’s strongest selling point – affordable, high-mileage vehicles – and crippled it financially by imposing unprecedented fines on the company for selling affordable, high-mileage vehicles.
Specifically, VW’s range of affordable high-mileage diesel-powered vehicles.
VW was the only car company selling a lineup of such vehicles, ranging from the $22k TDI Jetta – a family sedan that could travel more than 500 miles on a tank of fuel – to TDI-powered hatchbacks such as the Golf and Beetle as well as the larger Passat sedan. VW sold far more of these than Tesla sold $50k EVs that go maybe 300 miles.
