Volkswagen to spend $84 billion on electric cars and batteries

German car manufacturer Volkswagen (VW) has announced that it will spend $84 billion on electric cars and batteries. The company made the announcement at a pre-Frankfurt Motor Show.

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Earlier in 2017, VW announced it would be investing $10 billion in electric vehicles (EVs) but it has obviously changed its investment strategy. A full $50 billion is being invested in battery production. Toyota, Tesla and others are also battling to be first to discover and adopt new battery technology as discussed in a recent Digital Journal article. The company hopes to create a vast range of different electric cars. Matthias Mueller, CEO of VW, said: “A company like Volkswagen must lead, not follow. We have got the message and we will deliver. This is not some vague declaration of intent. It is a strong self-commitment which, from today, becomes the yardstick by which we measure our performance.”

Last September at the Paris Auto Show, VW introduced its I.D. electric model but planned to put it on the market only by 2020. Earlier this year VW said that it wanted to overtake Tesla as the leader in production of electronic vehicles. As well as the three models of the I.D., VW intends to bring multiple EV's to market branded as Audis and Porsches. VW appears to attempting to change its image after the disaster of the diesel emissions scandal in September of 2015 VW announced it would spend $18.32 billion to rectify the issues and to refit all the vehicles affected as part of a recall campaign.

VW is the worlds' largest automaker by sales. The company claimed that it would roll out a whopping 80 new EV's across its multi-branded group of cars by 2025. Its previous goal had been thirty. CEO Mueller said that VW would be "setting the scene for the final breakthrough for e-mobility", The I.D. model is intended to be competition for Tesla's low end Model 3 that has a starting price of $35,000 and is already coming on the market. Daimler announced that Mercedes-Benz would be offering electric versions for all models by 2022. BMW has had 13 electric models since 2013 and was readying factories to mass produce EVs by 2022 and promised 12 purely electric models by 2025.

In many countries EV's constitute less than one percent of sales. Norway is far ahead of others at over 22 percent in 2015 even though it is in the north of Europe. By contrast in the same year EV's had only 0.73 percent of the market in Germany. This was better than the US at 0.66 percent. China was better than both at 0.84 percent. Canada was a mere 0.35 percent. As some countries plan bans on fossil fuel vehicles in the future, EV's will no doubt claim a much larger share of the market.