Volkswagen aims for global leadership in electric cars by 2025

“The future is electric. We intend to be the No. 1 in e-mobility by 2025” says Volkswagen, as the company seeks global leadership in electric cars by 2025.

The Volkswagen Group has invested three billion euros in alternative drive technologies over the past five years and it will be tripling this amount to 9 billion euros over the next five years.

“This is how the Group will be rolling out more than 10 new electrified models by the end of 2018. By 2025, we will be adding over 30 more BEVs” said Matthias Müller, CEO of Volkswagen AG, at the Group’s Annual General Meeting in Hanover.

Müller also said that Volkswagen is “conducting intensive negotiations to establish partnerships in the field of battery cells in Europe and China”, adding that “we will soon be hearing more about this.”

According to Müller, modern internal combustion engines will nevertheless be indispensable for the foreseeable future: “This applies also and especially to the Euro 6 diesel, despite the current heated debate.” In total, the Volkswagen Group will be investing around 10 billion euros in these technologies by 2022, Müller: “The internal combustion engine primarily is part of the solution, not part of the problem.” And he added: “124 years after it was invented, the diesel engine still has plenty of potential. And we intend to exploit that potential. By 2020, we will have made our internal combustion engines between 10 and 15 percent more efficient, and therefore also cleaner. This will help protect the environment and conserve resources.”

In the meantime, the most popular electric car in the UK is the Mitsubishi Outlander plug-in hybrid.

Analysis by the RAC Foundation of the latest DVLA data shows there were 25,447 Outlanders on the road at the end of 2016, significantly ahead of the pure-battery electric Nissan LEAF at 14,718.

Third came the Mercedes-Benz C350 e (5,890) which pushed the BMW i3 (5,858) down into fourth place in the table. However the plug-in hybrid BMW 330 e enjoyed an increase in sales of 895 units at the end of quarter four in 2016 compared with quarter three in 2016.

At the end of 2016 there were a total of 83,169 licensed plug-in car and van grant eligible vehicles on the UK’s roads.

This is a 74% increase on the figure at the end of 2015 (47,922).