Entire Volkswagen Group to use just one car platform

The Volkswagen Group is readying a new do-it-all vehicle architecture that will debut in 2026 and eventually reduce the number of platforms it uses from five down to just one.

Under a sweeping 10-year plan dubbed ‘New Auto’ revealed this week, Volkswagen expects electric cars to be more profitable than combustion-engined models by 2030 – and by that time it’s expecting EVs to account for half of its global sales.

As such, the German auto giant is readying a new all-electric Scalable Systems Platform (SSP) that it says will serve as “one unified architecture for the whole product portfolio”, succeeding the MEB and PPE electric platforms, as well as the MQB, MMB, MSB and MLB layouts that currently underpin internal-combustion models.

What that means for model differentiation across the multiple brands and vast number of segments in which the Volkswagen Group competes remains to be seen.

But in a global presentation in Europe this week, group chief executive Herbert Diess said the new SSP will scale for vehicles from 85kW through to 850kW – the translation: from Volkswagen Polo through to Lamborghini supercars under VW’s ownership.

Volkswagen predicts that SSP will underpin more than 40 million EVs over its lifecycle, and like the current MEB electric architecture it will be licensed to other auto-makers.

Volkswagen expects 100 per cent of its vehicles to operate with zero tailpipe emissions by 2040, before turning fully carbon-neutral by 2050.

Elsewhere under the New Auto plan, Audi will take more responsibility for Bentley, Lamborghini and Ducati, while Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles will adopt more of a lifestyle bent while continuing its platform-sharing deal with Ford, which includes the next-generation Volkswagen Amarok that will be based on the incoming new 2022 Ford Ranger.

“Introducing the SSP means leveraging our strengths in platform management and building on our capabilities to maximise synergies across segments and brands,” said Audi chief executive Markus Duesmann.

“In the long run, our SSP will significantly reduce complexity in mechatronics.

“Thereby, it is not only a central premise to lower CAPEX, R&D and unit costs compared to MEB and PPE and to enable the group to reach its financial targets. It particularly is the enabler to manage future challenges in vehicle development, as cars become more and more software-oriented.”

Volkswagen is spending big on EV tech, committing €800 million ($A1.3bn) for a new research and development facility in Wolfsburg to improve its platform design capabilities, as part of a broader €73 billion ($A116bn) investment in R&D between now and 2025.

Between now and 2030, Volkswagen says it will have six large battery factories operational in Europe and will establish its own supply chain to keep costs down and ensure production stability.

VW has also committed to 10,000 DC fast-chargers in the US by 2025, plus an additional 18,000 DC fast-chargers in Europe and 17,000 in China.

In a similar vein, Volkswagen has revealed plans to develop its own software, rather than sourcing from suppliers. The new division is known as CARIAD, and is expected to comprise 60 per cent of VW Group vehicle software by 2030.