Volkswagen’s chief executive, Hebert Diess, is considering the possibility of hiring climate activists to analyze the company’s policies and accelerate its plans to be a greener and more sustainable company. “We have many ideas, but they take too long to implement in our large organization, so I need someone really aggressive inside,” Diess said recently in an interview.
Volkswagen aims to invest by 2024 a total of 33,000 million euros exclusively in the development of electric cars with batteries for all its brands. It’s an ambitious impulse through which the company intends to become a world leader in vehicle production electrical for mid-decade.
Volkswagen is currently immersed in the launch of ID.3, its first electric car based on the MEB modular platform. Production of this vehicle began in November; however, since then the company has been forced to store hundreds of units due to problems in the development of the vehicle software.
Apparently, the failures of ID.3 are massive due to the rapid development of the software. According to some of the brand’s test pilots, the units tested can exceed 300 daily software failures. Volkswagen has an army of 10,000 employees working in a hurry to find a solution, while the group’s managers are holding daily meetings in order to follow the development of the system. When the software problems are finally solved, Volkswagen will have to update the tens of thousands of units already manufactured, many of them manually.
We shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that the delay in the development of this software will also affect the rest of the group’s brands. Audi, SEAT, and Skoda will also use the MEB modular platform in their Q4 e-tron, el-Born, and Enyaq models, which will also be manufactured at the German Zwickau plant together with ID.3.
The situation is so serious that some sources begin to doubt that Volkswagen will be able to begin deliveries of the car in August as initially planned. The most pessimistic even cite a possible delay of one year until the problem is solved. If the company is unable to correct the situation on time, many managers (including Herbert Diess himself) could lose their job .