Volkswagen anticipates growing EV demand in Oz

Volkswagen acknowledges that Australians currently struggle to see any value in electric vehicles, but that situation could be quite fluid in future, says the importer's General Manager of Marketing, Ben Wilks.

Speaking with motoring.com.au during the launch of the Tiguan 162TSI earlier this week, Wilks was upbeat about the prospects of Volkswagen fielding EVs here, but the company must first introduce cars like the Golf GTE (pictured), as a stepping stone.

"We've got really strong product... especially even now, before the pure EVs, with our plug-in hybrids and our GTE product.

"I'd love to see us move further down the line with that car [Golf GTE]. We're looking at the possibility of that car in the line-up."

Wilks confirmed that VGA is currently studying the business case for the Golf GTE.

"There hasn't been so far a particularly compelling business case, but there hasn't been quite as compelling a product as the GTE as well."

Assuming the local business case for it prevails, the plug-in Golf is to be marketed as a sort of eco-friendly GTI surrogate, but underneath it's basically the Audi A3 e-tron that's already available in Australia. For VW it's a further step away from the diesel engine technology that has been at the centre of the dieselgate scandal.

But plug-in and battery-electric products are also imperative for any volume-selling manufacturer in a future of increasingly stringent emissions legislation in Europe. What's happening in Europe is an example of the way the wider community and the automotive industry are joining forces to deal with climate change.

"Amsterdam is a great example of a city that has driven this direction…" says Wilks.

"It has charging points on every street, and as a result there's a huge electric vehicle penetration. As well, of course, there's government subsidy that pushes the envelope there."

That is in fairly stark contrast with the situation in Australia, although there are green shoots of greenness budding in our urban centres. Nevertheless, it's the lack of local infrastructure that's hampering efforts here to establish EVs as a viable alternative to internal-combustion vehicles.

"We come from two angles; the big job, of course, is infrastructure," says Wilks. "That's the most important thing that we need to make electric vehicles work. We need an infrastructure that is ready.

"Naturally that infrastructure isn't going to start to take shape until there's demand that's built from customer demand.

"To drive the take-up of those vehicles, you need home infrastructure – and that world is changing quickly.

As we approach 2020, Wilks says, more "early adopters" living in "high-density areas" will demand electrified vehicles – both plug-in hybrids and battery-electric vehicles. This will, in turn, push a need for infrastructure to cope.

But the Volkswagen exec is confident that market forces can make that happen.