Volkswagen’s electric car ambitions… Goal to solidify to No. 1 beyond Tesla

Input 2021.03.11 15:04

Volkswagen, which is increasing the supply of electric vehicles by proclaiming to achieve 100% carbon neutrality by 2050, has announced its investment plan and vision for the development of electric vehicles and autonomous vehicles from the beginning of this year. Volkswagen ranked first in the European electric vehicle market last year. In the industry, there is also a prospect that the traditional automakers, led by Volkswagen, will surpass Tesla.

On the 9th (local time), the CEO of Volkswagen Group, Herbert Dis, announced through his Twitter that’Volkswagen Power Day’ will be held on the 15th. The CEO of DIS, in particular, emphasized that this event is not a car presentation. Along with the tweet, DIS CEO posted a 10-second video of charging the battery, and the industry predicts that Volkswagen will unveil its strategic plan for battery and charging station infrastructure through an event on the 15th.

‘Power Day’, a battery event announced on this day, is similar to’Battery Day’, an event when Tesla announced its half-price EV and battery roadmap in September last year. In the industry, some say that Volkswagen, which is trying to capture share in the electric vehicle market, is holding back Tesla. In January of this year, the first tweet that Des CEO signed up for on Twitter was also saying, “Volkswagen is the No. 1 market share in Europe,” tagging and provoking the account of Tesla CEO Elon Musk.

The Volkswagen Group, which has made the world’s most internal combustion locomotives, has been betting on electrification for years. Volkswagen unveiled its exclusive electric vehicle platform MEB in 2018, investing trillions of won, and ready to transform into an electric vehicle company. At the end of 2019, the Volkswagen Group invested 42 trillion won in 5 years to produce 1.5 million electrified products, and from 2034, it will completely stop new internal combustion engine cars, and from 2040, it will only sell battery electric vehicles (BEVs) and hydrogen cars that do not emit carbon dioxide. Announced that it was going to be done.

The group’s future mobility strategy extends beyond electric vehicles to self-driving vehicles. On the 5th, Volkswagen announced that it will accelerate and popularize autonomous driving by first applying the next-generation high-performance electric vehicle platform to the self-driving project’Trinity’ vehicle in 2026. Earlier, Volkswagen established a’Car.Software’ business division for autonomous driving technology development, and joined hands with Microsoft last month. This is to use Microsoft’s cloud computing service’Azure’ to process the vast amount of data required for autonomous driving.

Volkswagen, which entered the electric car market in earnest last year based on huge investment, defeated Tesla, the electric car powerhouse, and eventually achieved the No. 1 market share in the European electric car market. Last year, the Volkswagen Group sold 117,000 electric cars in the European market, which is more than 20,000 different from Tesla, which sold 96,000 units. In particular, Volkswagen’s first pure electric car ID.3 equipped with the MEB platform, despite being a model launched in the second half of last year, became the third most-selling electric car in Europe.

The industry predicts that in the long run, Volkswagen may rise to or surpass the Tesla class. UBS, a global investment bank, said in a recent report, “Tesla is leading in the information technology (IT) and software sectors that combine battery packs with automobiles, but Volkswagen is rapidly catching up.” Yanggang structure will be established,” he predicted.

In a report last year, SNE Research said, “Volkswagen will sell 1.12 million units from 2022 and surpass Tesla.” I will spread it,” he predicted.

Volkswagen’s challenge is the battery. According to a report by Reuters on the 10th, according to Volkswagen’s plan to expand the supply of electric vehicles, the required battery cell size by 2030 is 300 gigawatt hours (GWh) per year, which is by 2018. SK innovation (096770)It reaches the cumulative order volume of

To increase battery supply, Volkswagen decided to build a joint battery plant in Germany in 2019 in partnership with Swedish electric vehicle battery maker North Volt. With the aim of mass production at the end of 2023, the initial production volume is 16GWh. It is also possible to expand orders to existing battery partners. Volkswagen is a Samsung SDI (006400), SK Innovation, and China CATL supply batteries.