Roadmap E: full of energy! The Volkswagen Group is gathering speed as it heads towards the age of e-mobility. What can we ect? Here are seven recent miles Text: Joachim Hentschel A nyone who has already sat in an e-Golf¹ or e-up!², an A3 e-tron³ or Passat GTE⁴ and experienced the acceleration, the silent ride, and the ease of use will happily confirm that e-mobility really is quite something – and it’s happening right now. The transition from internal combustion engines to electric powertrains is often talked about as if it were an abstract principle, a topic for forecasts and visions. For Volkswagen Group brands and their customers, though, electric drives have been the real thing for quite some time now. Go electric? Let’s go! Several all-electric cars and plug-in hybrids are already on sale, and many more developments are in the pipeline. CEO Matthias Müller presented “Roadmap E,” the most comprehensive electrification initiative in the global automotive industry, in fall of 2017. By 2030 at the latest, Volkswagen Group brands will be offering at least one all-electric or hybrid version of their entire portfolio, comprising some 300 different models. Setting itself such a deadline is an unusual step in the automotive industry – and above all one that testifies to just how seriously the Group is taking e-mobility. “We are reinventing the car,” Matthias Müller says. “To achieve this, we are making targeted investments to provide the necessary funds from our own resources.” 12 €50 billion and more is the sum the Group will be investing in battery cell procurement over the coming years. The Volkswagen brand, for example, is currently developing the Modular Electrification Toolkit (MEB). This is a vehicle architecture optimized for e-mobility, which will serve as the basis for all future electric vehicles in the volume segment. Audi and Porsche are collaborating on the Premium Platform Electric (PPE) for the premium segment. In addition, the Group is researching battery potentials, getting production ready for manufacturing electric vehicles – and taking responsibility for the customer experience in
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