Titans of carmaking are plotting the overthrow of Elon Musk
https://www.seattletimes.com/business/titans-of-carmaking-are-plotting-the-overthrow-of-elon-musk/
In the other corner are giants of scale: Volkswagen and Toyota. The
world’s two biggest automakers — each sold roughly 10 or 11 cars for
every one Elon Musk did last year — realize the age of the
battery-powered vehicle is here and are gaming out how to stay on top.
Within five days of one another last month, these masters of mass
production laid out plans to splurge $170 billion over the coming years
to preserve their claim on an industry they’ve dominated for decades.
...
Every year that Chief Executive Officer Herbert Diess has been at the
helm, VW has announced unrivaled budgets for electrification. On Dec. 9,
he delivered his largest plan yet, allocating $100 billion to EV and
software development over the next half decade.
...
The architecture that the ID.3 and ID.4 share will underpin a total of
27 EVs by the end of this year. VW will go from making these models at
five factories — in Germany, China and the Czech Republic — to eight,
starting up production at two more facilities in its home country and at
its one U.S. assembly plant, in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
...
[Akio] Toyoda delivered a brief sales pitch for each vehicle, then
raised his palms to the skies before another curtain revealed 11 more
battery-electric models. “Welcome to our showroom of the future,” he
said, announcing plans to roll out 30 EVs by the end of the decade.
Of the $70 billion Toyota dedicates to electrification in that span,
half will go to fully electric models. The automaker is aiming to sell
3.5 million EVs annually by the end of the decade, almost double a
target set just seven months earlier.
...
In Brussels at the beginning of December, the company vowed to be ready
to sell only zero-emission cars in Europe by 2035. In North Carolina a
few days later, it hosted the governor and hundreds of other guests at a
news conference to announce the state would be home to its first U.S.
battery plant — a $1.29 billion investment.
...
This story was originally published at bloomberg.com. Read it here.
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