Recovering from the dieselgate scandal
Volkswagen still has to recover from what the press dubbed "dieselgate", the great scandal that exposed the German giant rigging emissions values via software in eleven million cars around the world. Needless to say, the number one priority is to leave all that chaos behind, and one of the strategies is to accelerate the production of electric cars. Technically, mass production will begin no earlier than 2018, but VW will present a prototype at the next Paris Motor Show, with a maximum range calculated at just over 598 kilometers.
Shares devalued by 40 percent, more than seven billion dollars that vanished into thin air, the heads of two CEOs, compensation for owners of almost 500,000 vehicles in the United States, and a stain on the record of diesel technology that will take a long time to erase. The Volkswagen dieselgate is sad and ironic at the same time, since diesel engines were the first to explore the concept of "biofuel", with that famous design that Otto Company presented at the 1900 World's Fair in Paris, which used Arachis, the genus from which peanuts come. Now, Volkswagen has a very important opportunity at the Paris Motor Show which will run from October 1 to 16, and if we obey the words of its brand president Herbert Diess (and not CEO as several media reported), there we will see one of its first electric cars.
An electric future
Volkswagen's current commitment, which gained a lot of strength after the scandal, is to launch more than thirty exclusively electric models before 2025. At first it had been speculated that this variety of models would include plug-in hybrid versions (something that CEO Matthias Müller mentioned earlier this year), but everything seems to indicate that the company's new path will be "electric", with a production volume aiming at three million units. It is assumed that the first cars will debut in 2018, however, Volkswagen will take advantage of the 2016 Paris Motor Show to share with the world a prototype with a range between 400 and 600 kilometers. NEDC parameters are a bit more flexible, but if we compare with EPA values, the Tesla Model S sits at 270 miles (434.5 kilometers). In other words, not bad.
Apparently, the so-called "300-mile barrier" (482 kilometers) is the next to cross for most manufacturers. Audi also has plans to launch an electric car in 2018 with a range of almost 500 kilometers, and from a technical point of view, the Tesla Model S could be "updated" to 611 kilometers. Of course, there are many factors to consider (starting with battery availability), but perhaps a bomb like Volkswagen's with its diesel cars was needed to accelerate production of electric cars. The rest, we'll see in October.
