Latest news with #Schäfer
Miami Herald
14-07-2025
- Automotive
- Miami Herald
Volkswagen's Big ID.4 Changes Should Worry Tesla And Ford
Volkswagen recently reported sales for the second quarter of 2025, and it made for grim reading if you're a fan of the brand's electric crossover, the ID.4. Sales of this model for Q2 were 1,992 units in the U.S., a massive 65% decline over the same period last year. This result could be down to two things: a market more hesitant to EVs, and increased competition in the segment. So perhaps it comes as good news that Volkswagen is planning a major update of its ID.4 in 2026; in June, VW USA only said the 2026 ID.4 would get a mid-model-year facelift, without mentioning any details. Although technically a facelift, the update is said to be so significant that the crossover will appear more like an all-new model. Here's what's in store. VW CEO Thomas Schäfer told Autocar that the updated crossover will be "really beautiful," with a design that more closely resembles other VW EVs like the ID.2. "We'll redo the ID.4 completely inside and out," said Schäfer. "It will be a completely different car - a huge step up." Known internally as the "electric Tiguan," Schäfer said next year's ID.4 "needed to fit in with the new design language going forward, since it is still our most important electric vehicle in numbers." While the current ID.4 is a neatly styled crossover, it's not as sportily styled as rivals like the Ford Mustang Mach-E or Chevrolet Equinox EV, so a restyle will be welcome. Of course, there's also Tesla's Model Y to worry about, which recently underwent a substantial redesign of its own. Related: I Think the 2025 VW ID.4's Pros (4) and Cons (3) Might Surprise You The interior will also get many changes for the updated ID.4, including a new dashboard and user interface. VW has recently been reintroducing traditional buttons for certain functions, and this ID.4 will also benefit from similar changes. A traditional round knob for the volume control will make a welcome return, following backlash over the brand's fussy slider controls. No powertrain details are known at this stage, but the typical improvements to range and efficiency are expected. The current ID.4 produces either 282 horsepower (single motor) or 335 hp (dual motor). The single-motor variant could do with a slight power bump, but the ID.4 has always been a smooth operator and not as overtly sporty as some rivals. Expected to arrive late in 2026, the heavily updated ID.4 should launch here as a 2027 model. Copyright 2025 The Arena Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Auto Car
14-07-2025
- Automotive
- Auto Car
Volkswagen's Model Y rival is getting a major update!
The company has not confirmed plans to go as far as changing the ID 4's name, but Schäfer previously suggested to Autocar that the Tiguan moniker would always have a place in Volkswagen's portfolio - even as the line-up goes all-electric: 'We've decided we're not going to throw away the traditional, successful names that have carried us for so long, that we've invested in for so long, like Golf and Tiguan. Why would you let them go?' An electric Tiguan equivalent has long been understood to be part of Volkswagen's product roadmap, the combustion-powered car being Volkswagen's most popular car globally, and was earmarked for a launch in 2025 or 2026 - which would coincide with the planned rollout for the upgraded ID 4. Speaking to Autocar, Volkswagen technical development boss Kai Grünitz recently confirmed that the ID 4 will follow the ID 3 hatchback in adopting the new design language first introduced on the 2023 ID 2all concept, giving them 'a family resemblance to the ID 2' as well as a 'lower and squatter stance'. Inside, Grünitz confirmed that the facelifted ID 3 and ID 4 will receive fully revised interiors featuring a new dashboard and user interface. Among the changes is a return of physical buttons and knobs in place of digital display-based functions and the controversial slider element, a move first hinted at by the ID 2All. 'We're going to bring back a round knob for the volume control,' an insider said, adding: 'If you develop something that works, and it has worked for years, there's no reason to replace it.'
Mint
10-07-2025
- Automotive
- Mint
How Volkswagen's electric bus went from American flagship to flop
As psychedelic rock blared, Thomas Schäfer hopped onto a Huntington Beach, Calif., stage flanked by surfboards two years ago to announce the rebirth of an automotive icon, the Volkswagen bus. The German auto giant was bringing back the bus as an electric vehicle, albeit one with a boxy design and two-tone paint job reminiscent of the original. The reboot was more than two decades in the making, and the company said the vehicle would soon be available in the U.S. 'Finally, finally," said Schäfer, a top VW executive, as the bus they called the rolled across the stage to wolf whistles from the crowd. The reception since has been considerably less enthusiastic. Volkswagen had hoped to ride a wave of nostalgia for a much-loved symbol of 1960s hippie counterculture as a way to carve out a larger chunk of the lucrative U.S. auto market—a feat that has defied the world's second-largest carmaker for half a century. Instead, the vehicle is shaping up to be yet another American misadventure for the company, reaching dealers years late, over budget and just in time for a trade war. Built in Germany, the model was delivered to its first U.S. customer days after the election of Donald Trump, who would go on to introduce a 25% tariff on imported cars and roll back government support for EVs. With a battery range of less than 250 miles per charge, the doesn't compare favorably with other new EVs. The German-led design also failed to account for some uniquely American tastes: It often needs to be fitted with extra cupholders at U.S. ports. Capping the model's troubles, all the vehicles shipped to the U.S. were recalled in April because the third-row seats were too broad, allowing three passengers to squeeze into a space with only two seat belts. Sales were suspended for two months while Volkswagen fit plastic parts to narrow the row, which meant the company only delivered 564 in the three months before the end of June. Even before the recall, the luxury sticker price of the ID. Buzz, which starts at about $60,000, kept a brake on sales as consumers pivoted to more affordable wheels. In the U.S., where the vehicle became available toward the end of last year, just over 3,000 had been shipped to dealers by the end of March. While a slowdown in EV sales and President Trump's tariffs have caught other automakers off guard, the debacle highlights institutional problems, such as internal divisions and sluggish, Europe-centric product development, that have dogged Volkswagen for years. Senior Volkswagen executive Thomas Schäfer at the launch for the in Huntington Beach, Calif., in June 2023. 'Could have been there earlier? Probably, yes," Kjell Gruner, president of Volkswagen Group of America, told reporters earlier this year. A spokesman for the in Germany said it was a 'halo" product designed to bring drivers to showrooms rather than sell in great numbers. He said it only arrived in the U.S. last year, following a 2022 launch in Europe, because Volkswagen's American business decided that a three-row extended version that only came later was the best fit for the U.S. market. Many hardcore VW fans have been disappointed by the rollout. In Dallas, Texas, European car enthusiast and parts supplier Autrey McVicker was 'dead set on getting the Buzz" until his dealer told him the pomelo yellow and white version he had his eye on would cost $72,000, far more than he had expected. 'I just couldn't justify such a high expense for an EV that would most likely lose 50% of its value the first year," he said. McVicker is still waiting for his He hopes to get one 'once they start popping up on the used market for what they are actually worth." The original bus sold in the millions, embodying Volkswagen's name, which means 'the people's car" in German. In the 1960s, the bus and the Beetle helped Volkswagen enjoy rapid growth. U.S. sales peaked at almost 570,000 in 1970, more than a third of the brand's global total. At the time, the van was priced at the equivalent of around $20,000, less expensive than most cars. Many of them festooned with peace signs and flowers, and capable of moving large groups around the country cheaply, the bus was a favorite of surfers, young families and hippies. (When Grateful Dead guitarist Jerry Garcia died in 1995, Volkswagen ran an ad with a tear falling from one headlight.) It spawned 'van life" several generations before the term was embraced by social-media influencers. But as the dollar fell against the deutschmark and Japanese auto companies expanded to the U.S., Volkswagen lost its edge. By 1993, Volkswagen sales in the U.S. had declined to a low of less than 50,000. A few years later, the New Beetle helped to revive the brand by channeling its 1960s heritage, and Volkswagen began plotting a similar effort for the bus. A first attempt was shown at the 2001 Detroit auto show. The concept was a hit and was cleared for series production, but following a management change, the new bus was canceled for fear it would be too niche and costly. Instead the company launched a rebadged Chrysler minivan, the VW Routan, that flopped. It took the greatest scandal in Volkswagen's history for the company to get serious about reviving the bus. In January 2016, less than four months after the company admitted to cheating on emissions tests, Volkswagen executive Herbert Diess delivered the keynote address at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Diess started with an apology to the millions of customers with affected vehicles, then pledged to create 'a different and better company. A new Volkswagen." 'Do you remember this iconic machine?" asked Diess, as a photo of a VW bus with a surfboard on the roof appeared on screen behind him. 'Ladies and gentlemen, the Volkswagen Budd-e." Diess was one of a growing group of auto executives who believed the industry was on the cusp of an electric revolution, and was a fan of Elon Musk. The Tesla CEO was preparing to launch the company's first mass market vehicle, the Model 3 sedan, which he said would cost $35,000. Nearly 200,000 people reserved a Tesla on the first day orders opened, and Diess used the new competition as a motivating tool to push Volkswagen to move faster. Volkswagen had toyed with the idea of bringing out an electric version of the more aerodynamic Beetle, according to former executives. But the company settled on electrifying the bus, partly because Americans were turning away from small cars in ever larger numbers. A Volkswagen bus in Greenwich Village, circa 1965. Diess saw the Volkswagen people carrier as a way to recapture what made the company popular in 1960s America: fun, affordable vehicles. Making them electric would help dispel the stench of its emissions scandal. The Budd-e concept offered a 'journey to the year 2019," Diess said. By mid-2017, when in Pebble Beach he announced regular production of the he was promising the first deliveries in 2022. It didn't reach America until 2024, after he had left the company. In his then role as head of the Volkswagen brand, Diess was in charge of the group's pivot to becoming an electric-car maker. Volkswagen owns luxury automakers Audi and Porsche in a structure that encourages competition between rival teams to develop new technologies, such as those feeding into the novel approach to electric vehicles that spawned the The belief was that friendly competition would yield a better product, but it had the effect of slowing down decision-making on the according to a former executive at Volkswagen's North American arm. The competition also drove up costs as the departments duplicated efforts, the person said. Volkswagen, which developed the alongside other EVs such as the ID.4, later vied with the company's separate commercial-vehicle arm for the right to produce it. Elon Musk and Herbert Diess with the Volkswagen Diess had considered making the vehicle in the U.S., where Volkswagen opened a factory in Chattanooga in 2011. As a compromise to get the over the line, Diess gave the vehicle to the commercial-vehicle business, which had produced the original bus and made its successor vehicles for sale across Europe. Chattanooga got to produce the more mainstream ID.4 SUV instead, while the commercial business gave up a project to electrify an existing van. But the commercial-vehicle engineers had less expertise on electric-vehicle technology and building automobiles for sale in the U.S. 'Commercial-vehicle engineers had to learn a lot of things, and the other engineers said, 'We're too busy, you figure it out yourself,'" the former Volkswagen North America executive said. 'That's why it took so damn long." The commercial-vehicle business is also based at a plant in Hanover that is among the company's most expensive. The labor cost of producing a vehicle in Germany was roughly $3,307 last year, compared with $1,341 in the U.S., according to a recent report by consultants at Oliver Wyman. Hundreds of millions of euros were also spent on upgrading the plant to accommodate production of an EV on an all-new platform. The decision to make the vehicle in Hanover was at least partially due to Volkswagen's complicated political situation. Hanover is the capital of Lower Saxony, the German region that owns 20% of the company's voting shares and has two seats on its board. 'Herbert's plans to take the bus out of Hanover and put it in another country didn't go down well with Lower Saxony," recalls one executive who was involved in the project. The Volkswagen spokesman said the factories run by the commercial-vehicle business were the only ones with the equipment to build a vehicle with side panels such as the Supply shortages pushed up battery costs during the pandemic, which was especially impactful for the given the large battery required to move a bus. High costs meant the plusher interior features initially envisaged, such as a soft dashboard and door panels, were gradually replaced with cheaper plastics as the project progressed. The styling of the original bus that made it so endearing turned out to translate poorly in the EV age. When Diess showed an prototype in 2017, he promised EVs that would be 'affordable for millions, not just to millionaires." The company prepared its Hanover factory to produce up to 130,000 units a year, and executives hinted that they could in time manufacture it in the U.S. as well. Only around 30,000 units were sold last year, hurt in Europe by key markets including Germany and Sweden rolling back EV subsidies. The original VW bus had its engine at the rear, giving it an unusually flat front and poor aerodynamics. For an EV, minimizing weight and air drag is key to maximizing range per unit of expensive battery power. An at a Volkswagen plant in Hanover, Germany, in 2022. Volkswagen's designers made the front of the much more sloping than that of the original bus, but they still had to use an outsize battery to report an anemic range of 234 miles at full charge. When the finally hit U.S. dealerships in October, the $60,000 price tag was criticized as being higher than many competitors' vehicles, which could also travel farther on a single battery charge. 'Anyone who has been around VW thinks the price point is high," said Fred Emich IV, a Volkswagen and Kia dealer. Designing and building cars in Germany for the U.S. comes with problems beyond just high costs. After less than a year on the U.S. market, the has already been subject to two recall notices, both for glaring design oversights. In April, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration warned that the vehicle showed the international brake-warning sign in amber rather than the word 'brake" in red capital letters, which is the requirement in the U.S. A few weeks later, the body said the third-row seat was too wide because it could accommodate three people even though it only had two seat belts. The company is fitting plastic parts to cover the sides of the seats in the roughly 5,600 vehicles affected. Volkswagen also appeared to miss the biggest appeal of the to American car buyers: its paint job. The top-of-the-line comes in a two-tone paint job with names like Cabana Blue and Pomelo Yellow, reminiscent of the vintage models often found in psychedelic hues. The base model is only offered in pedestrian white, gray or black. To help juice sales of those models, Volkswagen started directing dealers to wrap the cheaper versions with colored vinyl. The snafus are emblematic of Volkswagen's struggles to bring products designed for European tastes or regulatory standards to the U.S. Used to catering to sedan-loving Europeans, the company was slow to introduce SUVs as Americans started to embrace them in the 2000s. The emissions scandal itself was rooted in an effort to adapt a European technology for tighter U.S. nitrogen-oxide emissions standards, at minimal cost. 'The problem with all of the Volkswagen brands has always been that they've just been a bit too Europe-centric," said Citigroup analyst Harald Hendrikse. The company has made clear it wants to change that. At Volkswagen's annual general meeting in May, Chief Executive Officer Oliver Blume said it was 'formulating a vision for North America," where it wants to grow 'with products that are consistently geared to the expectations of American customers." But Blume didn't evoke the Instead he talked about Scout, the heritage SUV brand for which the company is building a $2 billion new factory in South Carolina. Write to Sean McLain at and Stephen Wilmot at
Hindustan Times
10-07-2025
- Automotive
- Hindustan Times
How Volkswagen's Electric Bus Went From American Flagship to Flop
As psychedelic rock blared, Thomas Schäfer hopped onto a Huntington Beach, Calif., stage flanked by surfboards two years ago to announce the rebirth of an automotive icon, the Volkswagen bus. The German auto giant was bringing back the bus as an electric vehicle, albeit one with a boxy design and two-tone paint job reminiscent of the original. The reboot was more than two decades in the making, and the company said the vehicle would soon be available in the U.S. 'Finally, finally,' said Schäfer, a top VW executive, as the bus they called the rolled across the stage to wolf whistles from the crowd. The reception since has been considerably less enthusiastic. Volkswagen had hoped to ride a wave of nostalgia for a much-loved symbol of 1960s hippie counterculture as a way to carve out a larger chunk of the lucrative U.S. auto market—a feat that has defied the world's second-largest carmaker for half a century. Instead, the vehicle is shaping up to be yet another American misadventure for the company, reaching dealers years late, over budget and just in time for a trade war. Built in Germany, the model was delivered to its first U.S. customer days after the election of Donald Trump, who would go on to introduce a 25% tariff on imported cars and roll back government support for EVs. With a battery range of less than 250 miles per charge, the doesn't compare favorably with other new EVs. The German-led design also failed to account for some uniquely American tastes: It often needs to be fitted with extra cupholders at U.S. ports. Capping the model's troubles, all the vehicles shipped to the U.S. were recalled in April because the third-row seats were too broad, allowing three passengers to squeeze into a space with only two seat belts. Sales were suspended for two months while Volkswagen fit plastic parts to narrow the row, which meant the company only delivered 564 in the three months before the end of June. Even before the recall, the luxury sticker price of the ID. Buzz, which starts at about $60,000, kept a brake on sales as consumers pivoted to more affordable wheels. In the U.S., where the vehicle became available toward the end of last year, just over 3,000 had been shipped to dealers by the end of March. While a slowdown in EV sales and President Trump's tariffs have caught other automakers off guard, the debacle highlights institutional problems, such as internal divisions and sluggish, Europe-centric product development, that have dogged Volkswagen for years. Senior Volkswagen executive Thomas Schäfer at the launch for the in Huntington Beach, Calif., in June 2023. 'Could have been there earlier? Probably, yes,' Kjell Gruner, president of Volkswagen Group of America, told reporters earlier this year. A spokesman for the in Germany said it was a 'halo' product designed to bring drivers to showrooms rather than sell in great numbers. He said it only arrived in the U.S. last year, following a 2022 launch in Europe, because Volkswagen's American business decided that a three-row extended version that only came later was the best fit for the U.S. market. Many hardcore VW fans have been disappointed by the rollout. In Dallas, Texas, European car enthusiast and parts supplier Autrey McVicker was 'dead set on getting the Buzz' until his dealer told him the pomelo yellow and white version he had his eye on would cost $72,000, far more than he had expected. 'I just couldn't justify such a high expense for an EV that would most likely lose 50% of its value the first year,' he said. McVicker is still waiting for his He hopes to get one 'once they start popping up on the used market for what they are actually worth.' Golden age The original bus sold in the millions, embodying Volkswagen's name, which means 'the people's car' in German. In the 1960s, the bus and the Beetle helped Volkswagen enjoy rapid growth. U.S. sales peaked at almost 570,000 in 1970, more than a third of the brand's global total. At the time, the van was priced at the equivalent of around $20,000, less expensive than most cars. Many of them festooned with peace signs and flowers, and capable of moving large groups around the country cheaply, the bus was a favorite of surfers, young families and hippies. (When Grateful Dead guitarist Jerry Garcia died in 1995, Volkswagen ran an ad with a tear falling from one headlight.) It spawned 'van life' several generations before the term was embraced by social-media influencers. But as the dollar fell against the deutschmark and Japanese auto companies expanded to the U.S., Volkswagen lost its edge. By 1993, Volkswagen sales in the U.S. had declined to a low of less than 50,000. A few years later, the New Beetle helped to revive the brand by channeling its 1960s heritage, and Volkswagen began plotting a similar effort for the bus. A first attempt was shown at the 2001 Detroit auto show. The concept was a hit and was cleared for series production, but following a management change, the new bus was canceled for fear it would be too niche and costly. Instead the company launched a rebadged Chrysler minivan, the VW Routan, that flopped. It took the greatest scandal in Volkswagen's history for the company to get serious about reviving the bus. In January 2016, less than four months after the company admitted to cheating on emissions tests, Volkswagen executive Herbert Diess delivered the keynote address at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Diess started with an apology to the millions of customers with affected vehicles, then pledged to create 'a different and better company. A new Volkswagen.' 'Do you remember this iconic machine?' asked Diess, as a photo of a VW bus with a surfboard on the roof appeared on screen behind him. 'Ladies and gentlemen, the Volkswagen Budd-e.' Diess was one of a growing group of auto executives who believed the industry was on the cusp of an electric revolution, and was a fan of Elon Musk. The Tesla CEO was preparing to launch the company's first mass market vehicle, the Model 3 sedan, which he said would cost $35,000. Nearly 200,000 people reserved a Tesla on the first day orders opened, and Diess used the new competition as a motivating tool to push Volkswagen to move faster. Volkswagen had toyed with the idea of bringing out an electric version of the more aerodynamic Beetle, according to former executives. But the company settled on electrifying the bus, partly because Americans were turning away from small cars in ever larger numbers. A Volkswagen bus in Greenwich Village, circa 1965. Diess saw the Volkswagen people carrier as a way to recapture what made the company popular in 1960s America: fun, affordable vehicles. Making them electric would help dispel the stench of its emissions scandal. The Budd-e concept offered a 'journey to the year 2019,' Diess said. By mid-2017, when in Pebble Beach he announced regular production of the he was promising the first deliveries in 2022. It didn't reach America until 2024, after he had left the company. Internal rivalries In his then role as head of the Volkswagen brand, Diess was in charge of the group's pivot to becoming an electric-car maker. Volkswagen owns luxury automakers Audi and Porsche in a structure that encourages competition between rival teams to develop new technologies, such as those feeding into the novel approach to electric vehicles that spawned the The belief was that friendly competition would yield a better product, but it had the effect of slowing down decision-making on the according to a former executive at Volkswagen's North American arm. The competition also drove up costs as the departments duplicated efforts, the person said. Volkswagen, which developed the alongside other EVs such as the ID.4, later vied with the company's separate commercial-vehicle arm for the right to produce it. Elon Musk and Herbert Diess with the Volkswagen Diess had considered making the vehicle in the U.S., where Volkswagen opened a factory in Chattanooga in 2011. As a compromise to get the over the line, Diess gave the vehicle to the commercial-vehicle business, which had produced the original bus and made its successor vehicles for sale across Europe. Chattanooga got to produce the more mainstream ID.4 SUV instead, while the commercial business gave up a project to electrify an existing van. But the commercial-vehicle engineers had less expertise on electric-vehicle technology and building automobiles for sale in the U.S. 'Commercial-vehicle engineers had to learn a lot of things, and the other engineers said, 'We're too busy, you figure it out yourself,'' the former Volkswagen North America executive said. 'That's why it took so damn long.' The commercial-vehicle business is also based at a plant in Hanover that is among the company's most expensive. The labor cost of producing a vehicle in Germany was roughly $3,307 last year, compared with $1,341 in the U.S., according to a recent report by consultants at Oliver Wyman. Hundreds of millions of euros were also spent on upgrading the plant to accommodate production of an EV on an all-new platform. The decision to make the vehicle in Hanover was at least partially due to Volkswagen's complicated political situation. Hanover is the capital of Lower Saxony, the German region that owns 20% of the company's voting shares and has two seats on its board. 'Herbert's plans to take the bus out of Hanover and put it in another country didn't go down well with Lower Saxony,' recalls one executive who was involved in the project. The Volkswagen spokesman said the factories run by the commercial-vehicle business were the only ones with the equipment to build a vehicle with side panels such as the Supply shortages pushed up battery costs during the pandemic, which was especially impactful for the given the large battery required to move a bus. High costs meant the plusher interior features initially envisaged, such as a soft dashboard and door panels, were gradually replaced with cheaper plastics as the project progressed. The rich people's car The styling of the original bus that made it so endearing turned out to translate poorly in the EV age. When Diess showed an prototype in 2017, he promised EVs that would be 'affordable for millions, not just to millionaires.' The company prepared its Hanover factory to produce up to 130,000 units a year, and executives hinted that they could in time manufacture it in the U.S. as well. Only around 30,000 units were sold last year, hurt in Europe by key markets including Germany and Sweden rolling back EV subsidies. The original VW bus had its engine at the rear, giving it an unusually flat front and poor aerodynamics. For an EV, minimizing weight and air drag is key to maximizing range per unit of expensive battery power. An at a Volkswagen plant in Hanover, Germany, in 2022. Volkswagen's designers made the front of the much more sloping than that of the original bus, but they still had to use an outsize battery to report an anemic range of 234 miles at full charge. When the finally hit U.S. dealerships in October, the $60,000 price tag was criticized as being higher than many competitors' vehicles, which could also travel farther on a single battery charge. 'Anyone who has been around VW thinks the price point is high,' said Fred Emich IV, a Volkswagen and Kia dealer. Dazed and confused Designing and building cars in Germany for the U.S. comes with problems beyond just high costs. After less than a year on the U.S. market, the has already been subject to two recall notices, both for glaring design oversights. In April, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration warned that the vehicle showed the international brake-warning sign in amber rather than the word 'brake' in red capital letters, which is the requirement in the U.S. A few weeks later, the body said the third-row seat was too wide because it could accommodate three people even though it only had two seat belts. The company is fitting plastic parts to cover the sides of the seats in the roughly 5,600 vehicles affected. Volkswagen also appeared to miss the biggest appeal of the to American car buyers: its paint job. The top-of-the-line comes in a two-tone paint job with names like Cabana Blue and Pomelo Yellow, reminiscent of the vintage models often found in psychedelic hues. The base model is only offered in pedestrian white, gray or black. To help juice sales of those models, Volkswagen started directing dealers to wrap the cheaper versions with colored vinyl. The snafus are emblematic of Volkswagen's struggles to bring products designed for European tastes or regulatory standards to the U.S. Used to catering to sedan-loving Europeans, the company was slow to introduce SUVs as Americans started to embrace them in the 2000s. The emissions scandal itself was rooted in an effort to adapt a European technology for tighter U.S. nitrogen-oxide emissions standards, at minimal cost. 'The problem with all of the Volkswagen brands has always been that they've just been a bit too Europe-centric,' said Citigroup analyst Harald Hendrikse. The company has made clear it wants to change that. At Volkswagen's annual general meeting in May, Chief Executive Officer Oliver Blume said it was 'formulating a vision for North America,' where it wants to grow 'with products that are consistently geared to the expectations of American customers.' But Blume didn't evoke the Instead he talked about Scout, the heritage SUV brand for which the company is building a $2 billion new factory in South Carolina. Write to Sean McLain at and Stephen Wilmot at How Volkswagen's Electric Bus Went From American Flagship to Flop How Volkswagen's Electric Bus Went From American Flagship to Flop How Volkswagen's Electric Bus Went From American Flagship to Flop
Qatar Tribune
09-07-2025
- Business
- Qatar Tribune
Leipzig coach Werner in agreement with Klopp on style of football
dpa Leipzig New RB Leipzig coach Ole Werner has said he is in full agreement with Red Bull Head of Global Soccer Jürgen Klopp on the future direction of the team. Werner, 37, said at his official presentation on Wednesday that he considers the exchange with former Liverpool manager Klopp 'a huge opportunity' and said that the two have talked a lot. 'We agreed very quickly on what kind of football we want to play here,' Werner said, pledging an active and aggressive game. Werner arrived on a two-year contract after four years at Werder Bremen, after Marco Rose had to go in spring and Zsolt Löw acted as caretaker for the remaining matches. Ambitious Leipzig finished seventh, failing to qualify for Europe for the first time since their promotion into the top flight in 2016. Werner wants this is to change again, saying: 'We want to get back into Europe, while we're also not setting any limits on how high we can aim. That's the clear task that's been assigned to me. 'RBL stands for a certain and unmistakable style of football. My job is to develop that further.' Pre-season training starts on Monday but it remains to be seen which players will still be around by the end of the transfer window in August. Forward Timo Werner appears to have no future after the end of his loan spell at Tottenham Hotspur, and managing director Marcel Schäfer confirmed that veteran forward Yussuf Poulsen was in talks with promoted SV Hamburg. Benjamin Sesko has been linked with a move to Arsenal, and Xavi Simons could reportedly leave if Leipzig can generate at least 70 million euros ($82 million) for the Dutchman. Schäfer said Leipzig want to reduce a squad of more than 30 players to ideally 25 or 26, and that they will have to generate transfer income in order to sign new players. 'Everybody knows exactly where they stand,' Schäfer said. 'Of course we don't want to keep the squad the way it is.'
