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Car of the future: Habeck criticizes VW's electric strategy

2019-10-04T10:26:23.547Z


The electric Volkswagen comes at affordable prices - but initially the group will install the technology in expensive cars. For Green Party boss Habeck cause a broadside against the Wolfsburg.



The Green chairman Robert Habeck has criticized the strategy of Volkswagen CEO Herbert Diess to equip first-class cars with electric drive. The number of customers who could afford a car for 100,000 euros is limited, said Habeck the "world" in a double interview with VW CEO Diess. "If you do not offer an e-mobile for less than 20,000 euros in 2025, then you will - I am afraid - fail in the market." Then VW had to concentrate on Porsches and SUV and was no longer Volkswagen. "Then you only offer premium cars and would have to rename themselves in PW," said the Green Party politician.

According to the paper, the Group strategy described this as follows: "First of all we make the Audi e-tron electric, then comes the Porsche Taycan, ie cars in the price segment of 80, 90, 100,000 euros, which can cope well with the additional costs of the more expensive battery. " With this - and especially with plug-in hybrids - VW will meet the EU's fleet emission targets for CO2 emissions per kilometer. "All in all, that means that the CO2 targets and the fleet targets do not initially cause the cars to get smaller," Diess told the paper.

Volkswagen General Representative for External Relations, Thomas Steg, announced in the "Welt" that Volkswagen wants to be at the forefront of the industry when it comes to converting to e-cars. "I hereby promise that we will democratize electromobility to a certain extent - Volkswagen will offer electric cars for less than € 30,000 and less," he said: "This will make electromobility affordable for most people."

Friso Gentsch / DPA

Platform of an electric vehicle from Volkswagen

At the same time VW rejected demands of the German environmental aid after a prohibition of internal combustion engines in Germany starting from 2025. "That is utopian and politically certainly not a majority," said Steg. DUH CEO Jürgen Resch had said to the paper: "The car makers pretend that we could just continue in our German-Gallic diesel village, but we can not."

Habeck's demand is aimed in the same direction, but not quite so far: diesel fuel and all company cars with internal combustion engine should permanently lose their tax advantage. "Tax subsidies for diesel and company cars must be rigorously restructured in the next few years," he said. "In the foreseeable future, company car privilege should only apply to zero-emission vehicles, which would provide a strong incentive to convert the vehicle fleet ecologically and would encourage corporations to move towards emission-free mobility."

Of the new registrations more than 60 percent are admitted to commercial owners, part serves as a company car. The low flat-rate taxation of company cars is an incentive for employers to pay off part of the salary in this form. As a compensation for the higher vehicle tax for diesel diesel fuel is taxed less than gasoline. Environmentalists calculate an "annual tax deficit of more than seven billion euros".

Source: spiegel

All business articles on 2019-10-04

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