Volkswagen Will Spend $86 Billion on Electric Vehicles over Five Years !

Every automaker is investing billions of dollars in electric vehicles (EVs).  There have been hundreds of EV startups, mainly in China. Most will not survive.  EVs are a lot simpler to manufacture than ordinary internal combustion engine vehicles.

Volkswagen's prior push into "low emissions" diesel engines didn't work out well, with  their "DieselGate" cheating on emissions measurements. Now VW is  pushing into EVs with huge capital expenditures

The latest annual VW  “5-Year Planning Round”  is to spend €73 billion ($86 billion) over the next five years on electric vehicles -- over half of its total five-year investment budget of $150 billion.  The prior plan had €60 billion for EVs, which was increased €13 billion, to €73 billion this year, by cutting non-EV spending:

Details of the €73 billion
  €35 billion in battery EVs  (BEVs), batteries, and battery cell production facilities.
  €11 billion in hybrid versions of existing vehicles.
  €27 billion in software development, artificial intelligence, autonomous driving, and “digitalization of significant business processes.”

Volkswagen already has 20 battery-electric vehicle (BEV) models in production.  By 2030, VW will have 70 BEV models in production -- and is planning to manufacture 26 million BEVs a year: About 7 million a year will use the High Performance PPR platform developed by Porsche. And about 19 million a year will be based on VWs modular electric drive matrix MEB:


General Motors said it would invest over $20 billion over five years on its BEVs and autonomous-driving technologies last March.

Tesla raised over $25 billion from investors since its initial oublic ratio, mainly by selling shares, including about $7 billion of shares sold this year.

Ford plans to spend $11.5 billion on EVs, and just unveiled the E-Transit urban delivery van. Fleets want urban delivery vans with all-electric drivetrains due to low maintenance costs. Last year Amazon ordered 100,000 electric delivery vans from Rivian Automotive, a startup where Ford is a big investor ($500 million) and a strategic partner.

The passenger vehicle market has not been growing, except for EVs.  In 2016, the US finally set a new record, with 17.55 million new vehicles sold, But that was only  slightly higher than the prior record in 2000.