Following the change at the head of the group, VW reviews its Hybrid strategy. The chances of it soon being deployed in the compact car segment seem to have rapidly shrunk.
According to a report in Automobilwoche, the new Volkeswagen CEO, Martin Winterkorn, expects that sales figures of Volkewagen’s Hybrid Touran are far too low to be economically viable for the company. The Hybrid Golf Limousine and the Hybrid VW Jetta are also not expected to be profitable, said the report.
VW estimates the additional price for a Hybrid engine to be at least Euros 2000. In the highly competitive compact car segment, the report said that VW executives believe that very few customers would be willing to pay this markup. Furthermore, the advantages in consumption compared to a diesel are hardly recognizable, it said. Nevertheless, VW seems to be working at full tilt on the Hybrid version of the SUV Touareg, which will be introduced to the market at the end of 2008. This will be a first VW series with Hybrid technology.
Hybrid technology is considered to be environmentally friendly and combines gasoline and electric engines. Toyota is especially successful with Hybrid cars, particularly in the United States. VW, Porsche and the suppliers ZF Friedrichshafen and Continental are all working together to push the development of hybrid engines, as is an alliance of General Motors, DaimlerChrysler and BMW. Even so, at January’s Detroit Auto Fair, it was obvious that the German car manufacturers were placing their bets principally on the diesel engine.
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