Volkswagen Group will soon set up a special electric vehicle company called scout in the United States, which will produce all electric pickups and rugged off-road vehicles for American consumers Sources familiar with the company's plans told techcrunch that the company's supervisory board, chaired by Hans Dieter P ö Tsch, would vote on the matter on May 11. The board of directors is expected to approve the proposal.
In the U.S. market, several other carmakers, including Ford, GM, Tesla and the new rivian, either plan to produce electric pickups or are already on the way to produce electric pickups. Volkswagen has strategically avoided the increasingly competitive full-size pickup market dominated by Ford F-150, GMC Sierra and Chevrolet Silverado. Instead, Volkswagen plans to build a C-class pickup truck, which is smaller and comparable to Ford maverick.
According to a source who asked not to be named, the new brand named after the iconic International Harvester scout listed in the early 1960s will wait until 2026 to start producing the two electric vehicles.
According to sources, Volkswagen intends to provide an initial investment of $100 million for the establishment of the new company, and then there will be more investment. This initial fund will be used to create the company's structure, establish management and start hiring employees. According to sources, some future investments may come from external sources and may not be limited to institutional investors. This could open the door to private equity or individual funding for such efforts.
Scout brand can help Volkswagen CEO Herbert dis achieve several ambitious goals. Volkswagen aims to become the world's largest seller of electric vehicles by 2025 and double its market share in the United States to 10% by the end of this century.
Volkswagen has other plans to increase its market share in the United States, including introducing its electric ID buzz long wheelbase passenger model into the North American market in 2024. However, the creation of a new unit shows that Volkswagen wants to enter a market that has been cold for the company for many years, that is, before the arrival of all electric id.4 in 2021.
In the autumn of 2021, after Johan de nyschen, chief operating officer (COO) of Volkswagen America group, put forward this idea during a conversation with the media, speculation about Volkswagen's possible revival of scout as an electric off-road vehicle appeared for the first time. Volkswagen acquired scout's naming rights after its commercial truck division, traton, merged with Navistar in the summer of 2021. It is reported that International Harvester stopped producing scout in 1980 and closed down five years later.
At that time, COO envisioned an SUV similar to rivian, with a price of $40000 - a big discount from the actual rivian R1s SUV. From a rendering shared with techcrunch, we can see the two proposed designs of SUV and pickup, which are a mixture of old-fashioned classic scout and some rivian aesthetic elements.
It is worth noting that, according to sources, scout will have its own bottom platform to design for off-road vehicles and vehicles with higher clearance.
It is unclear where scout will be located or where the vehicle will be assembled. It is unusual for an independent brand to open a shop in Volkswagen's chattanou processing plant, which is expected to take into account that these new cars will not be manufactured on Volkswagen's modular electric drive Kit (MEB) platform.
MEB is a flexible modular system -- actually a matrix of general components, the brands of Volkswagen Group -- including Audi, seat, Skoda and Volkswagen. It is used to improve the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of producing electric vehicles. About 30% of Volkswagen's electric vehicles are already based on MEB, including Volkswagen id.3 (an electric hatchback sold only in Europe), id.4 SUV and id.5 and various variants of Audi Q4 e-tron. By 2025, the carmaker is expected to exceed 80%.
Scout branded vehicles will initially be manufactured for the U.S. market. However, the source said that the platform may be used by other brands and used worldwide in the future. The smaller c-pickup will be ideal for other markets, including Europe and South America.