According to the new boss of the Volkswagen brand, the upcoming Euro 7 emission standard will have a major impact on the price of cars with an internal combustion engine. Manufacturers are therefore changing their strategy and trying to speed up the transition to electromobility.
“The VW Group no longer sees combustion engine cars as a cost-effective alternative to electric cars in the medium term,” he said German newspaper Welt am Sonntag the newly appointed head of the Volkswagen brand Thomas Schäfer. He expects car prices to rise significantly as a result of the Euro 7 emission standard, which is due to enter into force from 2025.
“Combustion cars will be 3,000 to 5,000 euros more expensive due to more complex exhaust gas cleaning (CZK 75,000 to 125,000 – editor’s note),” the manager, who until a few days ago headed Škoda from Mladá Boleslav, calculated in an interview. According to Schäfer, these additional costs will hardly be absorbed by small cars in particular. According to him, the prices at the level of a quarter of a million crowns, which we are used to nowadays, will no longer exist.
“In 2025, the VW Group wants to launch four models of small electric cars on the market,” Schäfer said. In addition to the ID.2, Volkswagen will present one more, Škoda and Cupra will come with others. According to Schäfer, Volkswagen wants to offer the ID.2 “for less than 25,000 euros”, i.e. roughly 625,000 crowns. However, as recently as last year, information about a price of up to 20,000 euros leaked from the car manufacturer.
The upcoming emission standard is not just causing wrinkles on Volkswagen’s forehead. The Stellantis conglomerate, which includes Peugeot, Citroën and Opel, also prescribes increasingly large doses of fossil amnesia to its customers.
When the concern announced in January that its mass-market vans will be electric only, it did not forget to emphasize that these are only personal versions of these models. Half a year later, however, everything is different – in the configurator for Berlingo, Combo, Rifter or Jumpy, we can no longer find an electric version, which now also applies to commercial models.
Opel also withdrew the Insignia model, whose second generation was launched in 2017 and underwent a facelift only the year before, from the offer without compensation. The spacious station wagon once competed with the Passat, but now, according to an Opel spokesperson, “the end of the non-electrified platform” dating back to the GM era has freed up capacity at the Rüsselsheim factory for the production of the Astra and its sister model, the DS4. It was originally thought that the Insignia would end only in 2024, when it was supposed to get an electric successor.
The mass exodus of cars from internal combustion engines has a common denominator – it takes place discreetly, practically without any publicity. Information usually comes to light only when someone notices the change. As in the case German weekly Automobilwoche, which drew attention to the statement of the top manager of BMW online issue of the magazine Manager Magazin about the upcoming platform named Neue Klasse (New Class). All models of the brand will gradually switch to this.
The platform planned for 2025, in addition to focusing on electric cars, was originally supposed to deal with combustion and hybrid models as well. At least it was like that last year he promised the head of the car company, Oliver Zipse, in the British Car Magazine. “That probably won’t happen,” stated Automobilwoche, referring to an article in a magazine for managers in which a BMW representative swept such a possibility off the table.
According to Automobilwoche, BMW is counting on the production of internal combustion models in the coming years as well, but it will not be on the Neue Klasse platform, from which the automaker promises a lot.
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