Following the full (well, perhaps there’s more to come…) unfolding of the Volkswagen diesel scandal, the company went ahead and appointed a new CEO — Herbert Diess — and stated that it was going to be speeding up its electric vehicle program.
As part of that claimed focus on electric vehicles, the company will be introducing a new platform — the modular electric kit (MEB) — specifically for electric vehicles, according to the new CEO.
The new MEB platform will make use of a flat-floor battery setup in order to provide a higher capacity/range design.
Worth noting here is that the new CEO was actually the head of R&D at BMW for a while — including during the development period for the i3 and i8. Also worth noting, is that the first vehicles using the new platform won’t be hitting the market for at least 3–4 years — and that’s presuming that all goes well.
“This can cover all the brands, covering cars bigger and smaller than the Golf, with ranges of 300–500 kilometers (about 190–310 miles),” Diess commented. “It’s much easier to make full use of the electric technology if you dedicate a platform to it. We have enough scale to dedicate one of our platforms to electromobility.”
Commenting on the decision to create the new platform, Diess stated: “There was discussion already; we have to refocus what we are doing. And there is a general discussion, not only in VW but in the industry, about real driving emissions. So the electric car gets more attractive month by month because for conventional cars the emissions are getting more expensive, the limits are coming down. Also the batteries are getting cheaper and the charging infrastructure is getting richer in most countries, so the rationale for investing in electric cars gets better every month.”