“The core has always been good value”
In conversation with Volkswagen CEO Thomas Schäefer on the sidelines of the ID. 2all concept unveil
ON FUTURE PLANS FOR INDIA
“India has always been a strong focus for the group. India is also going through recent policy changes, a very good move now for electric mobility and R&D. So I would say, a stronger focus that will remain. There’s no Project 2.5 or 3.0 ― just a normal, you know, strong focus going forward.”
TALKING PROFITS
“Just last year actually, if we had better supply, especially in semiconductors and some of the key cost components and stuff like that, we would have had, by far, the best year ever (in terms of sales)... For now, I can safely say that the margins are good. India can be a very challenging market to learn.”
BREAKING DOWN COST OPTIMISATION AND LOCALISATION FOR EVS
“Electric mobility will be feasible if you have the battery system under control ― it’s about 40 per cent of the value of the car ― if you have favourable energy costs with the country, if you have to produce the cells, and so on, so forth. If you launch (a product) and are waiting for the cells, that’s not going to fly… it’s very encouraging to see the opportunity for battery electric optimisation.”
NO ELECTRIFICATION OF EXISTING MODELS
“Those vehicles (Taigun and Virtus) are designed with the optimal ICE configuration that would make no sense to electrify.”
AN INDIA-BOUND PRODUCT BASED ON THE MEB PLATFORM “Not before we put this (ID. 2all) on the roads here. But you can imagine, there could be other possibilities based on the same (MEB Entry) platform, shortly after that. That could be an interesting car too.”
INDIA AS AN EXPORT HUB
“We have very strong export activity on our vehicles from India and there’s lots of interest in great quality, good costing vehicles. I don’t have the exact figure on hand, but there’s lots of demand from Africa, which also has something to do with logistic supply from South America. Logistic supply is complicated, always has been, there’s been freight loads, you know, most of it, especially with shipping and stuff. So shipping-in goods from Brazil to any place around the world is really complicated. So these two factors are playing in the cars of India operation. Also across Southeast Asia and so on, which is really encouraging, not just what we always wanted. We wanted (India to be) a hub for many of our regions that are outside Germany, rather than investing and expecting that somewhere else.”
RESHAPING THE BRAND
“The brand needs to be clear, what purpose it’s about, and you know, what it’s not about. We clearly almost forgot about a lot of our history, about our strengths that we always had. We always made cars that were valuable, much better than people thought that would be with masterpiece kinds of qualities, in terms of design and materials. So in this race of being different, we might have made some mistakes, especially with the ID range that we are busy fixing three years from now, so that’s all good. But the core has always been good value, best choice, absolute best price, and being told the customer’s focus ― what the customers really want.”