Tag Archives: VW

Report: Volkswagen to Sell Stake in Electrify America

vw

According to a report in Automotive News, Volkswagen Auto Group is about to sell its stake in Electrify America, a company that builds chargers for electric vehicles.

The company wants to do this so that it can seek outside funding to build its own charging infrastructure.

According to the News, VW is working with Citi to find a co-investor that would be willing and able to pump $1 billion into building charging infrastructure.

Electrify America, a rival to Tesla’s Supercharger network and ChargePoint, came into the picture after VW’s diesel-emissions scandal and has been expected to spend $2 billion on the expansion of a charging network for EVs from 2017 to 2026. So far the company has 635 stations active and 125 planned.

As recently as March, Electrify America and VW made mention of plans for further expansion. Now, VW is trying to consolidate its infrastructure efforts.

The segment is attracting attention from all sorts of companies as the EV future looms larger and larger.

Renault and Shell, for example, are rumored to have an interest in becoming co-owners of Ionity, a European joint venture for charging that is already owned by OEMs such as BMW, Daimler, Ford, Hyundai, and VW.

It makes sense to see OEMs investing in charging companies and attempting to increase infrastructure to support the EVs they plan on selling. The bigger question is why VW is possibly moving away from one company and seeking out another.

Regardless, expect to see more corporate musical chairs over the next few years.

[Image: Volkswagen]

Fisker Ocean to Utilize VW’s MEB Platform… Probably

Fisker Inc.

Henrik Fisker, CEO of Fisker Inc., has announced a deal reached with Volkswagen that allows him to use the German company’s MEB architecture to build the all-electric Ocean crossover. While it seems like the platform is going to turn up everywhere before long, the deal hasn’t actually been made official.

Neither Fisker nor VW feels comfortable saying the arrangement had been finalized.

But that couldn’t contain Henrik’s excitement. The Fisker Inc. founder was on social media this week proclaiming the upcoming Ocean would start at just $29,999. Mathematicians will notice this is less than $30,000 and actually pretty damn cheap for an electric crossover, especially one that’s supposed to contain so much luxury and sustainability (the latest in a long line of empty terms used by the industry). The series of 9s at the end of Fisker’s proposed pricing should have tipped you off that there might be some light shenanigans afoot. 

A seasoned car salesman, he neglected to note that the price given actually includes the available federal tax credit. The real price will be $37,499, which isn’t new information.

Still, it’s not a bad price if this thing is all its cracked up to be. Fisker certainly seems excited and we know Volkswagen Group doesn’t have many issues with sharing its MEB architecture. It’s already spread liberally throughout its own subsidiaries and will be used by Ford to underpin numerous electric vehicles over the next few years.

Based on an investor presentation foreshadowing the partnership, Fisker’s arrangement with Volkswagen may also include battery packs and ancillary components — helping bring the Ocean to market more quickly and at a lower cost than if company attempted to fly solo. Though one wonders why anyone would bother getting one, when it sounds like it will basically be a badge-engineered VW.

“Volkswagen is still open to support small series projects that demonstrate the variety of conceivable concepts based on the MEB platform through their emotional appearance,” a spokesperson for Volkswagen said in an email to The Verge in reference to its investor presentation.

“In consultation with Volkswagen, the Audi subsidiary Italdesign has now used the MEB platform as the basis for the development of the Fisker Ocean SUV. However, a final decision has not yet been made about a possible cooperation with Fisker to implement a series project.”

We just hope it doesn’t use a single line of Volkswagen’s coding. The German company seems to have serious issues in getting some of its newest models to behave, forcing it to unleash at least one EV onto the market half baked. While a fix is supposedly forthcoming, selling a product that’s effectively broken from Day One is an embarrassment.

[Images: Fisker]