Volkswagen (VOWG_p.DE) intends to sell electric cars for less than 20,000 euros ($22,836) and protect German jobs by converting three factories to make Tesla (TSLA.O) rivals, a source familiar with the plans said.
VW and other carmakers are struggling to adapt quickly enough to stringent rules introduced after the carmaker was found to have cheated diesel emissions tests, with its chief executive Herbert Diess warning last month that Germany's auto industry faces extinction.
Plans for VW's electric car, known as "MEB entry" and with a production volume of 200,000 vehicles, are due to be discussed at a supervisory board meeting on Nov. 16, the source said.
Fallout from cheating on diesel emissions tests continues. If German automakers, of which VW is the largest, switch to electric vehicles (EVs), will other car companies have to follow suit?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 10 2018, @06:22AM
Whereas I live in a very rural area, and have no problems with internal combustion engines or their exhaust, whatever the fuel source.
I think that's at the core of most non-city-dwellers resistance to EPA-style regulation. It's not that we like 'harming the environment', but when you take multiple-million human beings, give them each an automobile, then cram them in the space of something like Greater LA, you're going to have a much, much bigger problem than those same millions with the same automobiles, spread out over something the size of, say, north and south dakota. Emission-control systems come with inherent trade-offs that cause legitimate problems for a lot of use-cases, and having them designed for the LA valley and then rammed down our throats by Law when we're out in the middle of nowhere, is really rather frustrating.
tldr: context matters.