Cars will ‘drive’ themselves and be updated like smartphones – Volkswagen eyes a digital future
Company to invest billions on innovation
VOLKSWAGEN has given the world its vision of a digital future where most cars will be electric, many will ‘drive’ themselves and they can be updated like a smartphone.
As it outlined the groundwork for such a future, the motoring giant revealed how:
:: Many new cars will be able to get over-the-air updates every 12 weeks from this summer.
:: The next generation of plug-in hybrids will have a battery-powered range of 100km – twice the current levels.
:: There will be at least one new Volkswagen electric vehicle every year from now on.
The true game-changer is digitalisation, Volkswagen said as it revealed its Accelerate plan for future mobility. The car is becoming a software-driven product that can create its own “business opportunities”.
It is warning of fierce competition from new tech-based, non-motoring competitors with “unlimited resources” who want to cash in on the business of mobility.
In announcing it is taking huge steps towards digital transformation, Volkswagen says that by 2030 autonomous driving will be available to ordinary people – not just the wealthy.
Essentially, it says that rather than just being a car company, it has to even more quickly become a software-driven tech entity.
It plans to invest billions of euro over the next five years to speed up the transformation – but also needs to make money to find the investment.
That means continuing to make and improve cars with diesel and petrol engines, though some will fall by the wayside due to lower volume and a radical efficiency drive.
Those surviving the cut, for now, include all core models, including the Golf, Tiguan, Passat and T-ROC. They will get “another successor”.
The number of variants will be reduced but those being made will have myriad functions on demand – in other words, you pick and pay.
As a measure of how quickly things are changing, the firm estimates that by 2030 around 70pc of Volkswagen vehicles sold in Europe will be electric. That is tied in closely to the development of a new platform for EVs.
CEO Ralf Brandstätter said: “We are accelerating the transformation in all areas and will change faster and more radically than ever before,” he said.
He identified four key areas in the group’s plans: electrification, software-defined products, new data-based business and autonomous driving.
He revealed how the company had established the ID Digital system that will provide “over-the-air” updates every 12 weeks starting this summer. That means a car can remain up-to-date throughout its life cycle and “become better and better with new functions”.
Volkswagen says: “A fully networked fleet of over 500,000 vehicles is expected to be on the road in just two years’ time, through which Volkswagen will be able to transmit direct customer feedback to new functions.”
By turning the vehicle into a “software-based product”, it is hoping to generate additional revenue over the service life of the car through charging and energy services.
So while there will be fewer variations of future models, you will instead be able to choose functions on demand at any time using the vehicle’s digital ecosystem – fewer models, more individual choice.
As a measure of the scale of change envisaged, the company has earmarked around €16bn for investment in future trends of e-mobility, hybridisation and digitalisation up to 2025.
Underlining its target of bringing out at least one new EV model every year, it said the all-wheel-drive ID.4 GTX01 will kick things off this year, followed by the sporty ID.501 in the second half. And it has brought forward plans for an electric car under the current ID.302 with an entrylevel price around €20,000 (probably a bit more here) by 2025.
It is also planning the next generation of a highperformance all-electric drive toolkit – the Scalable Systems Platform. This will be deployed in 2026 for the first time in the Volkswagen’s flagship project, Trinity, which merges new tech such as autonomous driving, on-demand functions and improved production processes.
Trinity will enable Level 2+ automated driving from the outset and Level 4 in the future. Volkswagen said: “Trinity will become a kind of time machine for our customers, saving them time and stress. However, this technology must not become the preserve of a select elite, which is why we are scaling it to make it available for many people.”