Volkswagen’s $193 Billion

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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Volkswagen’s $193 Billion

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Volkswagen wants to compete in the electric vehicle (EV) market in a way that may never be surpassed. It plans to invest $193 billion to be a leader in the arena. The figure is staggering, even by the standards of global manufacturers such as Ford and General Motors. Like other public corporations that will spend fortunes to win EV market share, the $193 billion is no guarantee of success. (Here is every major automaker’s plan to go electric.)
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According to CNBC, VW will spend the money between this year and 2027. Like all car companies, much of the anticipated success will be in China, which already has begun rapid EV adoption and is the largest car market in the world by far.
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VW may stump like GM and Ford have. The Wall Street Journal has pointed out that GM’s Hummer EV and Cadillac Lyriq sales have started slowly. “The difficulties highlight how amid the fanfare around electric vehicles, car companies are having trouble manufacturing them at scale, hindered in part by challenges of navigating new supply chains for the technology,” the paper reports.
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Ford’s launch of its EV flagship, the F-150 Lightning, has been plagued by price increases and battery glitches. This hardly helps the public’s perception of whether it is a pickup with consideration in a crowded field.
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Looming over all the launches is Tesla. No matter how large the chorus of criticism is, the company will sell as many as 2 million cars this year. Despite recalls, and the occasional odd behavior by founder Elon Musk, Tesla’s brand visibility has only grown. Musk’s fame has helped keep the brand on the front pages, which is something advertising and public relations cannot buy.

Volkswagen is yet another car company that plans to dominate the EV world. The $193 million will not guarantee that.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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