ID. Volkswagen – Simply Electric

Authors

Dr. Frank Welsch, Member of the Board of Management Volkswagen Brand,
Volkswagen AG Wolfsburg

Year

2019

Print Info

Fortschritt-Berichte VDI, Reihe 12, Nr. 811

Summary

The automotive industry is undergoing a transformation. The reasons for that are not only growing market and customer demands for flexible, long-range and connected mobility, but also legislative requirements for a significant and sustainable reduction in CO₂ emissions. Volkswagen is expressly committed to the targets set in 2015 by the UN Climate Change Conference in Paris and is striving to make its entire fleet CO₂ neutral by 2050. To achieve this, bearing in mind a roughly ten-year fleet renewal cycle, a fleet of new, CO₂-neutral vehicles must be realised by as soon as 2040.

Volkswagen laid the foundation for this back in 2016 with the “TRANSFORM 2025+” strategy launching the biggest and farthest-reaching change process in the history of the company. The aims of this strategy are sustained growth in efficiency and productivity. These will form the basis to enable a massive expansion of electric mobility and connectivity by 2025 and beyond.
To drive forward its objectives, the Volkswagen Group will invest around 44 billion euros by 2023 in significant forward-looking topics like digitalisation, mobility services and CO₂-neutral production. A large proportion of that investment is flowing into sustainable electric mobility. Aspects of that include the wide-ranging expansion of charging infrastructures, the development of new technologies and the restructuring and expansion of the company’s factories in Zwickau, Hanover and Emden. With these initiatives, Volkswagen aims to steadily reduce the CO₂ emissions of its entire fleet to zero by 2050 and realise increasing CO₂ neutrality across the entire fleet. In so doing, Volkswagen is adhering to three principles: The effective and sustainable reduction of CO₂, the conversion of energy supply to renewable energies and the compensation of unavoidable emissions.

However, CO₂ neutrality and the implementation of a 100-percent shift to electric mobility need a certain ramp-up phase. For this reason, Volkswagen is adopting a broad technology mix in its powertrain and fuel strategy.
The Group’s aim is to provide exactly the right mobility to meet the expectations and
requirements of each customer and each market [3]. The (partially) electrified internal
combustion engine remains a major pillar of the Volkswagen powertrain portfolio. Its reallife CO₂ emissions will fall continually with increasing use of CO₂-neutral fuels, known as efuels. These liquid or gaseous fuels can be fed easily into the existing fuel-station network and thereby help make the operation of vehicles powered by internal combustion engines, including the existing fleet, increasingly climate neutral from the well-to-wheel perspective. Beyond that, the fuel cell holds substantial promise to become a significant pillar within the portfolio.