When the tide of electrification surges in, change has become the constant theme of this era.
As the world's largest automotive conglomerate, Volkswagen embraces the advent of the era of electrification in an all-round way with an "all-in" attitude. Volkswagen CEO Herbert Diess is also considered to be the helmsman of the car company with the most profound understanding of electrification after Musk. In the past year, the Volkswagen Group has made a lot of efforts and attempts to accelerate the electrification transformation, and the effect is obvious.
From the perspective of sales performance, the Volkswagen ID. family delivered a total of 14,167 new cars in November, an increase of 11.2% from October, and sales exceeded 10,000 for three consecutive months, showing a rising trend.
"We launched the ID.3, ID.4 and ID.6 models this year and have significantly raised our sales forecast for next year." Recently, After participating in the Global CEO Council Dialogue with CEOs around the world, Dies tweeted, "We have achieved good results this year, and key profits will further drive our transformation to NEW AUTO." At the same time, we need to combine the advantages of China's speed and local technology platform to maintain our global competitiveness under the new pattern of NEW AUTO. ”
The 2030 NEW AUTO strategy released in July this year is the guiding benchmark for the future development of the Volkswagen Group, and based on the NEW AUTO strategy, Volkswagen will accelerate the transformation of the group into a software-driven mobility service provider.
In accordance with the strategic deployment, the Group will integrate the superior resources of its brands, large-scale platform technology and new mobility services, give full play to the synergy effect within the Group, and create recurring revenue and future profit sources. Among them, by 2025, 73 billion euros will be allocated for investment in future technologies, accounting for 50% of the total investment.
In this sense, the public is no longer the public we originally knew, and this "elephant" that is rushing on the road of electrification once again makes people feel its unstoppable power.
Behind many electrified products, Volkswagen Group has done a lot of planning and layout in the fields of supply chain, manufacturing and other fields, aiming to promote the sustainable development of the whole industry chain.
Electrification products are inseparable from battery technology. On March 15 this year, the Volkswagen Group presented its first "Power Day" event on the battery and charging technology route for the next 10 years. The route aims to significantly reduce the complexity of the production process for batteries and significantly cut costs, making electric vehicles more attractive and affordable. The goal is to significantly reduce battery costs with new standard cells from 2023 onwards. At the same time, ensure the supply of batteries after 2025. In addition, the Volkswagen Group is actively promoting the construction of high-power public charging infrastructure around the world.
Issues such as waste battery recycling have also been incorporated into Volkswagen's battery and charging technology roadmap for the next decade.
The day after Power Day, Volkswagen announced a future-oriented, platform-focused strategy and set out its goal of becoming a leading provider of personal mobility services in the era of electrification and full connectivity.
At present, the Volkswagen Group has built one of the most powerful pure electric platforms in the industry, the MEB modular electric drive platform, and put the platform into production in Europe, China and the United States. Next year, the Volkswagen Group will launch a total of 27 models built on the MEB platform around the world, and launch the first models based on the PPE high-end electric platform.
Compared with the MEB platform, the PPE platform has greater improvements in terms of acceleration performance, range and charging time. In addition, the Volkswagen Group plans to start the development of the SSP Scalable System Platform around 2025, which will be a new automotive platform that combines pure electric, fully connected and highly scalable, which will be suitable for all brands and all classes of the Group.
On July 13, Volkswagen Group and Guoxuan Hi-Tech further deepened their partnership and reached a strategic cooperation framework agreement. The cooperation aims to promote the industrial production of battery cells at volkswagen group parts company Salzgitter plant and to develop the first battery application case using standard cells for volkswagen group conventional mass production models. These two cooperation projects can be said to be part of the battery and charging technology strategy of Volkswagen Group, and are the best embodiment of the landing of the "Power Day" strategy.
This is also the original intention of the Volkswagen Group to release the "2030 NEW AUTO" strategy. As Diess puts it: "Our strategic goal is to become a leader in the global pure electric vehicle market, and we are moving towards that goal." With the development of software technology, the next fundamental change in the automotive industry is the evolution to safer, smarter, and ultimately autonomous vehicle products. For the Volkswagen Group, this means that technology research and development, transformation acceleration and scale development will be more important than ever. ”
In September this year, Volkswagen China's battery system plant in Hefei, Anhui Province, officially started construction. The plant is the volkswagen group's first wholly-owned battery system plant in China, with an initial annual production capacity of 150,000-180,000 high-voltage battery systems, all of which will be used for pure electric models produced at Volkswagen's Anhui MEB plant. It is reported that Volkswagen China plans to invest more than 140 million euros in the construction of a new plant and supporting facilities by 2025, which will be put into operation in the second half of 2023.
Different from the new car manufacturers, the Volkswagen Group has an annual sales volume of nearly 10 million vehicles in the world, so any decision must be made in advance of the layout of the industrial chain, rather than "taking a step and looking at a step". After all, the industrial chain of the automobile is very long, and it is not a one-time car, but a comprehensive and long-term strategy.
There is no doubt that the original intention of electrification transformation is to decarbonize, return the earth to a blue sky, and let human beings have a better living environment. Therefore, the electrification transformation of the automobile industry has not deviated from this original intention only if it truly lands in all aspects of the entire industrial chain.
When the Volkswagen Group released its "2030 NEW AUTO" strategy, it publicly stated that "sustainable development" and "achieving carbon neutrality" are important components of its new strategy. By 2030, the Volkswagen Group will reduce the carbon footprint of each vehicle over its entire life cycle by 30% compared to 2018, in line with its commitment under the Paris Agreement. At the same time, the share of pure electric vehicle models is expected to rise to 50%. By 2040, all new vehicles sold by the Volkswagen Group in major markets around the world will be close to zero emissions. By 2050 at the latest, the Volkswagen Group will be carbon neutral.
This goal is 10 years ahead of China's proposed "carbon neutrality by 2060".
"Climate change will be the biggest challenge facing humanity in the coming decades. The uncontrolled burning of coal, oil and gas is exacerbating climate degradation. More and more people are aware of the gravity of the situation and want to be able to act on it. "At this year's Munich Motor Show, Diess said that we firmly believe that human beings can stop the climate change caused by their own actions and achieve the 1.5 degree Celsius temperature control target of the Paris Agreement." We have an unshirkable responsibility to accelerate the process of carbon reduction across the Volkswagen Group's business areas. ”
I think it's a reflection of the responsibility and responsibility of the world's largest automotive conglomerate, and it also sends a clear signal that don't underestimate the speed at which elephants turn around.