“Volkswagen: dreams and reality”

The latest remarks of VW’s CEO Michael Müller on Germans’ alleged unwillingness to take advantage of the carmaker’s green product range have caused irritation and protest by politicians and mobility experts, write Stefan Menzel and Dietmar Neuerer in Handelsblatt. Ferdinand Dudenhöffer, director at the Center for Automotive Research (CAR), said German carmakers “only understood with Tesla that e-cars actually exist”. Lower-Saxony’s [VW’s home state] economy minister Olaf Lies said that a CEO criticising his customers’ buying decisions was “completely on the wrong track”. Müller previously said in an interview that there was “no lack of supply” for e-cars in Germany, but customers were “reticent” when it comes to e-mobility. VW recently vowed to commence a shift towards e-mobility, but the cheapest e-car currently costs about 27,000 euros, whereas the cheapest conventional car costs less than 10,000 euros, the authors write.

Read the article in German (behind paywall) here.