Prestige project: “The situation is serious”: Volkswagen pauses development of the ID.Golf

Berlin. The ailing car manufacturer Volkswagen is pausing the development of the electric Golf. The preliminary development work for the ID.Golf would be suspended, said VW brand boss Thomas Schäfer on Friday in an interview published on the intranet and available to the Reuters news agency. “We simply cannot afford this work right now.” The aim is to resume work as quickly as possible.

To do this, costs would have to be reduced further, said Schäfer. The plants in Emden and Zwickau are on track to reduce their factory costs. However, the main plant in Wolfsburg is currently not achieving its goals, with a shortfall of around 300 million euros in the current year. “The situation is serious,” said Schäfer.

The austerity program is a marathon. “But one thing is also clear: a small sprint would help us right now.” The ID.Golf is scheduled to come onto the market in the early 2030s on the SSP electric platform. The electric T-Roc is planned to be the first SSP-based vehicle.

The Volkswagen brand made a loss of 182 million euros in the third quarter, which is the first quarterly loss since the Corona year 2020. According to Schäfer, the increasing demand for electric cars, among other things, plays a role: Volkswagen still earns less money with these vehicles than with comparable combustion engines. In addition, there is price pressure, especially from Chinese manufacturers who are pushing into Europe with competitive prices, especially for hybrids.

Overall, the Core brand group, which includes Volkswagen as well as Skoda and Seat, generated sales of 106.4 billion euros in the first nine months, which is 0.5 percent less than in the previous year. Operating profit fell by 400 million euros to 4.3 billion euros, and the return fell by 0.3 percentage points to 4.1 percent.