VW to scale down production of evs
Discussion
DonkeyApple said:
sam.rog said:
Volkswagens issue is the fact their product are crap. Not crap compared to the competition but generally crap.
Volkswagen of past were decent enough if a little boring for a PH looking for 10/10ths and cheap to finance.
Now they are crap and expensive to finance. The Koreans are mopping up the VW buyers.
With the size of VAG they should be dominating as they have the budget the others dream of.
Theres not one VAG product that appeals to me (excluding porsche).
I'm not sure I'd call the ID products crap. They seem good enough but they're priced wrong and there isn't much they can do about that as they cost so much more to make than other EVs. Volkswagen of past were decent enough if a little boring for a PH looking for 10/10ths and cheap to finance.
Now they are crap and expensive to finance. The Koreans are mopping up the VW buyers.
With the size of VAG they should be dominating as they have the budget the others dream of.
Theres not one VAG product that appeals to me (excluding porsche).
Unfortunately China are now shifting equally great cars for the people for about £10k less.
If the car you're selling is a bit sexy, you can play with price. But if the car you're selling is a white good then.. lowest price seals the deal.
TheDeuce said:
DonkeyApple said:
sam.rog said:
Volkswagens issue is the fact their product are crap. Not crap compared to the competition but generally crap.
Volkswagen of past were decent enough if a little boring for a PH looking for 10/10ths and cheap to finance.
Now they are crap and expensive to finance. The Koreans are mopping up the VW buyers.
With the size of VAG they should be dominating as they have the budget the others dream of.
Theres not one VAG product that appeals to me (excluding porsche).
I'm not sure I'd call the ID products crap. They seem good enough but they're priced wrong and there isn't much they can do about that as they cost so much more to make than other EVs. Volkswagen of past were decent enough if a little boring for a PH looking for 10/10ths and cheap to finance.
Now they are crap and expensive to finance. The Koreans are mopping up the VW buyers.
With the size of VAG they should be dominating as they have the budget the others dream of.
Theres not one VAG product that appeals to me (excluding porsche).
Unfortunately China are now shifting equally great cars for the people for about £10k less.
If the car you're selling is a bit sexy, you can play with price. But if the car you're selling is a white good then.. lowest price seals the deal.
Silvanus said:
They obviously aren't crap, but are they actually great? I've personally not driven one but know a few ID owners who will be moving to rivals when they change. They've had niggles with various things and the infotainment sounds below average. I'd describe them as decent enough, but certainly not great.
They're OK, the niggles could be fixed. I'm surprised vw has let things go on for so long. A company as large as them should have had things fixed already. One of the major issues for me is that if you have the big battery you lose the seat in the middle making it a 4 seat car rather than 5, so no good for me. Other manufacturers don't seem to have this issue.
I've spent 3 days in an id3, their infotainment beats the 21 Honda Jazz I used to own.
That was even worse, randomly taking 20-60 seconds sometimes to boot up when the car was started. Plus losing the phone connection randomly (wired or wireless) and nothing you could do would reconnect until 5 minutes later it would decide to work again.
It wasn't just me, several magazines have had the same issue with their own yest cats.
However Honda didn't have a clue and had no plans to fix it. It's shocking how large companies can let things slip.
Fusion777 said:
Driving dynamics are out. All about the infotainment and mumflies now.
As someone who has never had any interest in any of the infotainment stuff in a car I am constantly amazed how many seem to hold it to such importance, even down to the words on the speaker covers which I genuinely though people grew out of by the early 20s. But it is clearly of huge importance, regardless of whether I understand it. For me a perfectly designed car is the one where you just get in and drive and never have to press any of the buttons and the screen generally stays black most of the time. I don't really know any of the functionality of my cars and if anything I see it as a trap to try and keep you prisoner of a brand anyway.
The monthlies thing I get completely. Most people live on a modest salary or wage and being able to lock in the cost of an essential car over a three year period makes perfect sense and then breaking that down to align with salary payments is obvious. And most normal people will want that number to be as small as possible so I suspect that is why the MG EV is selling better than the VW one.
Every medium to long term tightening of disposable income lets in the next manufacturing nation that wants to take a share of the Western market. Tesla is almost unique in breaking in during an economic boom but it did so by being an intensely aspirational product that certain people needed to be associated with. For Japanese, Korean, Eastern European cheap manufacturers they had to wait for recessions. China has planned and waited for over twenty years for this moment. It is the world's dominant EV market and will be shunned during the good times but during lean times people put that to one side and start buying. I think that is what we are seeing with MG. among EV buyers the European stuff is just unnecessarily expensive for just a box to move you from A to B repetitively and then dispose of.
Even with a large company, if a system or a division is late to the party then they'll always be playing catchup. If it's software, then you can always say that we can do OTA updates and get feedback from customers (ie effectively beta test) but no amount of software updates will compensate for bad hardware. When there is a release date looming they're more likely to ship with issues and fix them later rather than delay a launch. As a paying customer the majority would rightly expect things to just work well without fuss from day 1.
Silvanus said:
TheDeuce said:
DonkeyApple said:
sam.rog said:
Volkswagens issue is the fact their product are crap. Not crap compared to the competition but generally crap.
Volkswagen of past were decent enough if a little boring for a PH looking for 10/10ths and cheap to finance.
Now they are crap and expensive to finance. The Koreans are mopping up the VW buyers.
With the size of VAG they should be dominating as they have the budget the others dream of.
Theres not one VAG product that appeals to me (excluding porsche).
I'm not sure I'd call the ID products crap. They seem good enough but they're priced wrong and there isn't much they can do about that as they cost so much more to make than other EVs. Volkswagen of past were decent enough if a little boring for a PH looking for 10/10ths and cheap to finance.
Now they are crap and expensive to finance. The Koreans are mopping up the VW buyers.
With the size of VAG they should be dominating as they have the budget the others dream of.
Theres not one VAG product that appeals to me (excluding porsche).
Unfortunately China are now shifting equally great cars for the people for about £10k less.
If the car you're selling is a bit sexy, you can play with price. But if the car you're selling is a white good then.. lowest price seals the deal.
A company with this much platform sharing and economies of scale should be head and shoulders above every other manufacturer but they're consistently beige. Uninspiring, boring, mediocre, unreliable s
te. They trade off the old fallacy of reliable, solid engineering and I've no idea why people think they're a cut above the norm.VAG have no interest in making class leading products and are purely in it to fleece customers. That to me, makes them worse than crap.
Zero Fuchs said:
Personally, I'm with Sam and have long had a dislike for all things VAG, except perhaps for Skoda.
A company with this much platform sharing and economies of scale should be head and shoulders above every other manufacturer but they're consistently beige. Uninspiring, boring, mediocre, unreliable ste. They trade off the old fallacy of reliable, solid engineering and I've no idea why people think they're a cut above the norm.
VAG have no interest in making class leading products and are purely in it to fleece customers. That to me, makes them worse than crap.
I think that is pretty much the norm for all though. The veneer of quality is close to transparent on all modern goods. A company with this much platform sharing and economies of scale should be head and shoulders above every other manufacturer but they're consistently beige. Uninspiring, boring, mediocre, unreliable s
te. They trade off the old fallacy of reliable, solid engineering and I've no idea why people think they're a cut above the norm.VAG have no interest in making class leading products and are purely in it to fleece customers. That to me, makes them worse than crap.
DonkeyApple said:
Zero Fuchs said:
Personally, I'm with Sam and have long had a dislike for all things VAG, except perhaps for Skoda.
A company with this much platform sharing and economies of scale should be head and shoulders above every other manufacturer but they're consistently beige. Uninspiring, boring, mediocre, unreliable ste. They trade off the old fallacy of reliable, solid engineering and I've no idea why people think they're a cut above the norm.
VAG have no interest in making class leading products and are purely in it to fleece customers. That to me, makes them worse than crap.
I think that is pretty much the norm for all though. The veneer of quality is close to transparent on all modern goods. A company with this much platform sharing and economies of scale should be head and shoulders above every other manufacturer but they're consistently beige. Uninspiring, boring, mediocre, unreliable s
te. They trade off the old fallacy of reliable, solid engineering and I've no idea why people think they're a cut above the norm.VAG have no interest in making class leading products and are purely in it to fleece customers. That to me, makes them worse than crap.
That's my point, VAG just want to produce safe, unremarkable products, but for premium prices.
Zero Fuchs said:
I don't know. Hyundai and Kia have come up with some quality offerings and platform sharing with the Ionic 5 and EV6, which also happen to be class leading. Their 5/7 year warranties and reliability stats seem to demonstrate that. Honda, Toyota might be a bit boring in general but even their boring stuff (Jazz etc) are quality. When they put their mind to it, they produce top notch stuff, like the CTR, GR Yaris/86. I'm not taking about soft touch plastic but stuff that actually matters.
That's my point, VAG just want to produce safe, unremarkable products, but for premium prices.
I don't know - we've had (still have) a couple of Honda Jazz's in the family and they're certainly not without issue. I keep an eye on a Jazz forum and the old folks really don't like the later models - similar kind of complaints to those you see with VW, infotainment software issues, auto-lights and wipers with minds of their own etc. Some owners have rejected newer Jazz's, or given up and got sold them.That's my point, VAG just want to produce safe, unremarkable products, but for premium prices.
Our wider family has never been into VAG but our daughter got a Golf 6 - we looked around, including at the Kia and Hyundai equivs and the Golf just seemed a cut above them. Then my wife needed a new car and she got one of the last of the mk1 Tiguans. It was seeing the £89/mth leasing deals on here that made we look at them. We didn't get one for anything like that but it seemed the right car / equipment / price at the time. Still got it 8yrs later.
It's not about Vs cars not being good, they're fine. We had a Mk7 golf GTD and it's a car that's been refined to near perfection over the decades.
But it's still sensible car for the masses. And if VW stick with that market, they'll get spanked by the Chinese who can easily make equivalent cars for less.
I don't think there is an answer for VW tbh, they're simply in the wrong position Vs the new competition. The fact the ID range has been disappointing hasn't helped but even if it had been better... The future would still be bleak.
But it's still sensible car for the masses. And if VW stick with that market, they'll get spanked by the Chinese who can easily make equivalent cars for less.
I don't think there is an answer for VW tbh, they're simply in the wrong position Vs the new competition. The fact the ID range has been disappointing hasn't helped but even if it had been better... The future would still be bleak.
VW are in the wrong position because they fell off a long time ago. Happy with mediocrity and unable to truly innovate or keep pace with everyone else. Now they're stuck while other brands pass them by.
They had a great opportunity with the iD range but the iD3 is neither efficient, low mass, faster, better to drive, innovative in design, a great drive or any other measurable metric. It's another safe product whose lack of anything remarkable is reflected in the low numbers i see on the road.
They had a great opportunity with the iD range but the iD3 is neither efficient, low mass, faster, better to drive, innovative in design, a great drive or any other measurable metric. It's another safe product whose lack of anything remarkable is reflected in the low numbers i see on the road.
But isn't that the VW brand to a fault? Cheaper and they stick a Skoda badge on, dearer and it's an Audi badge and then they start sticking Porsche, Bentley and Lambo trim levels and badges on stuff?
The whole of Porsche SE is set up to have multiple brands for multiple market segments and market conditions. In a way, given where money tightening is occurring you'd expect the EVs with the VW stickers to be the first to notice?
The whole of Porsche SE is set up to have multiple brands for multiple market segments and market conditions. In a way, given where money tightening is occurring you'd expect the EVs with the VW stickers to be the first to notice?
Zero Fuchs said:
VW are in the wrong position because they fell off a long time ago. Happy with mediocrity and unable to truly innovate or keep pace with everyone else. Now they're stuck while other brands pass them by.
They had a great opportunity with the iD range but the iD3 is neither efficient, low mass, faster, better to drive, innovative in design, a great drive or any other measurable metric. It's another safe product whose lack of anything remarkable is reflected in the low numbers i see on the road.
Not sure where you are but I see loads, it is easily the most popular EV in my area, which has always astounded me due to it being very average, but then again it has the correct badge on the front!!They had a great opportunity with the iD range but the iD3 is neither efficient, low mass, faster, better to drive, innovative in design, a great drive or any other measurable metric. It's another safe product whose lack of anything remarkable is reflected in the low numbers i see on the road.
I sell Renault, we sold many early and earlier ZOE's to previous VW customers, purely because it was all there was at the time, apart from the Leaf, as soon as the ID3 was launched they were back to VW.
FWIW, I’ve been in the EV charging sector for 7 years and I would never have imagined it would be this quiet in 2023. By now, I would have thought we’d be flat out but tbh, home installs tick along and an ok rate and commercials are slowly growing.
My thoughts are that EVs are new tech. They may be quieter and pollute locally less than an ICE car but they are poorer for longer journeys and suffer limited range in the cold and are more expensive than ICE equivalents (themselves not cheap). Overall, from a user perspective, they are less good than ICE.
People buying, to begin with, were mostly people who like new tech and/or well-off people who could afford the novelty of an EV. And latterly, company car owners who had big tax incentives.
Beyond this is the average person/budget. An EV is very expensive, cheap finance deals (right now) are few and far between, home chargers are £1000+ and there’s the cost of living concerns.
I see news of lots of new EV sales but I don’t see that in terms of installs. I don’t see as many EVs on the road as I’d expected and this is the first year I have heard of people trading in EVs for ICE vehicles. I believe that the rate of EV take-up in the UK has also slowed.
I wonder how many people tell potential owners about the reduced ranges in winter and how many of these are put off by that. Not helped either by so many TV scare stories.
People say EV take-up is growing in other countries but we’re ahead of the curve. They will get to the same stage too.
VW is unlikely to be the only manufacturer to have to scale back production. It’s a nightmare for them as governments have told them to go EV, but customers aren’t convinced.
My thoughts are that EVs are new tech. They may be quieter and pollute locally less than an ICE car but they are poorer for longer journeys and suffer limited range in the cold and are more expensive than ICE equivalents (themselves not cheap). Overall, from a user perspective, they are less good than ICE.
People buying, to begin with, were mostly people who like new tech and/or well-off people who could afford the novelty of an EV. And latterly, company car owners who had big tax incentives.
Beyond this is the average person/budget. An EV is very expensive, cheap finance deals (right now) are few and far between, home chargers are £1000+ and there’s the cost of living concerns.
I see news of lots of new EV sales but I don’t see that in terms of installs. I don’t see as many EVs on the road as I’d expected and this is the first year I have heard of people trading in EVs for ICE vehicles. I believe that the rate of EV take-up in the UK has also slowed.
I wonder how many people tell potential owners about the reduced ranges in winter and how many of these are put off by that. Not helped either by so many TV scare stories.
People say EV take-up is growing in other countries but we’re ahead of the curve. They will get to the same stage too.
VW is unlikely to be the only manufacturer to have to scale back production. It’s a nightmare for them as governments have told them to go EV, but customers aren’t convinced.
Frimley111R said:
VW is unlikely to be the only manufacturer to have to scale back production. It’s a nightmare for them as governments have told them to go EV, but customers aren’t convinced.
When the 'them' is VW they can go and get fked as they brought all this upon themselves for being inherently corrupt at Board level 
The rod they made for their own back is solely born from their endless corruption.
HTP99 said:
Not sure where you are but I see loads, it is easily the most popular EV in my area, which has always astounded me due to it being very average, but then again it has the correct badge on the front!!
I sell Renault, we sold many early and earlier ZOE's to previous VW customers, purely because it was all there was at the time, apart from the Leaf, as soon as the ID3 was launched they were back to VW.
I live close to Milton Keynes, so EV utopia. Possibly the highest numbers of EV's in the country, due to the superb infrastructure. I see loads of EV's nowadays (significantly more than when I bought mine 5 years ago) but very few VW's, which is amazing given there's a huge VW office and their staff car system is bonkers i.e. very good. Seems even their staff don't want them.I sell Renault, we sold many early and earlier ZOE's to previous VW customers, purely because it was all there was at the time, apart from the Leaf, as soon as the ID3 was launched they were back to VW.
Zero Fuchs said:
HTP99 said:
Not sure where you are but I see loads, it is easily the most popular EV in my area, which has always astounded me due to it being very average, but then again it has the correct badge on the front!!
I sell Renault, we sold many early and earlier ZOE's to previous VW customers, purely because it was all there was at the time, apart from the Leaf, as soon as the ID3 was launched they were back to VW.
I live close to Milton Keynes, so EV utopia. Possibly the highest numbers of EV's in the country, due to the superb infrastructure. I see loads of EV's nowadays (significantly more than when I bought mine 5 years ago) but very few VW's, which is amazing given there's a huge VW office and their staff car system is bonkers i.e. very good. Seems even their staff don't want them.I sell Renault, we sold many early and earlier ZOE's to previous VW customers, purely because it was all there was at the time, apart from the Leaf, as soon as the ID3 was launched they were back to VW.
The whole VW thing interests me, I had a customer probably 18m - 2 years ago looking at a ZOE and an ID3, the wife (who was to be the main user) clearly preferred the ZOE, the size, the interior, the general operation and she was a Renault fan, she had nothing favourable to say about the ID3, however the husband tied himself in knots trying to justify why the ID3 was better for them, it was just plain odd and the nuts and bolts of it was, it was a VW!
This was around the time that VW had major supply issues too, ZOE was generally readily available, it would be interesting to see how long they actually waited for the car and how they got on with it.
Frimley111R said:
It’s a nightmare for them as governments have told them to go EV, but customers aren’t convinced.
It's not going to be helped by things like today's front page of the Mail about pressure on the UK Government to back-off on the 2030 ICE ban.I live in semi-rural West Cheshire. Loads of VWs but ID.x are a rare sight. I am constantly amazed by how many Teslas I see though - there's a significant number of owners in our village.
Edited by Sheepshanks on Monday 3rd July 11:07
More potential discounts for up-and-coming Tesla buyers, Telsa has produced more cars than delivered for the second quarter this year.
https://insideevs.com/news/674765/tesla-production...
https://insideevs.com/news/674765/tesla-production...
Had an A4 followed by a Passat up until I retired as company lease cars , both ok , but both suffered from software issues , even told by a dealer problem with hands free was because I had an I Phone , laugh ! Anyway cured with about the fourth update , A4 had software issues to especially with stop start not working intermittently. A4 loved hitting speed bumps driving around london god knows what it looked like under the front. A4 had high service costs to and dealers which were a shower.
Wife has ordered a Renault Megane e tech , really nice and good reviews generally, but Renault couldn’t organise a party in a brewery, 5 weeks to get it delivered from a uk field to the dealer ! WHAT!
Wife has ordered a Renault Megane e tech , really nice and good reviews generally, but Renault couldn’t organise a party in a brewery, 5 weeks to get it delivered from a uk field to the dealer ! WHAT!
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