VWG on target to deliver 2025 strategy
The Volkswagen brand will launch eight electric or hybrid vehicles next year as part of its 2025 strategy.
It will launch 34 new models in total, including 12 SUVs.
Volkswagen COO Ralf Brandstätter said: “We are at the beginning of a new era. We mean business with e-mobility. The brand will be investing €19bn in future technologies through 2024, €11bn alone in the further development of e-mobility. And Volkswagen starts the biggest electric offensive in the automotive industry next year: The ID.3 goes on sale in the summer, soon followed by the ID.Next, our first electric SUV. Our ID. family makes emission- free mobility accessible to many people for the first time. That is New Volkswagen.”
The brand aims to achieve a carbon-neutral balance by 2050, and the digital transformation is an important stepping stone. Signed off in 2019, the roadmap also lays the groundwork for expanding the software expertise of the brand and the group. The Car.Software organisation will already begin operating as an independent business unit in January 2020. By 2025, the in-house share of car software development and vehicle-related services is to rise from under 10% today to at least 60%.
CFO Arno Antlitz said: “Our strategy is gaining a foothold. Our vehicles are convincing customers and our consistent discipline with respect to costs and investments is having a positive impact. We therefore confirm our target of an operating return on sales of four to five percent for the full year 2019 in a difficult market environment. As announced, we expect to generate cash flow from operating activities significantly in excess of one billion euros in 2019. Our financial targets for 2020 remain unchanged. Furthermore, we reaffirm our targets for 2022 of an operating return on sales of at least six percent and cash flow in excess of €2bn.”
Production has also become more efficient in 2019, with the brand exceeding its annual productivity improvement target of five per cent. The improvement by the end of the year is expected to be more than seven per cent.
