Volkswagen Says Trinity-Based Cars Won’t Arrive Before 2030 At The Earliest – CleanTechnica

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Elon Musk and Tesla get a lot of criticism, and deservedly so, for making big promises that take years longer than expected to come to fruition — if they ever do at all. Roadster 2.0 anyone? FSD that really is full self-driving? But Volkswagen is proving other companies can be guilty of overpromising and underdelivering as well. Its Cariad software division has been through multiple leadership changes, restructurings, and false starts, and is still not fully up to speed. That may be one reason why the company’s much ballyhooed Scalable Systems Platform — first proposed by Herbert Diess — has been delayed once again.

In Diess’ vision, SSP would be a second-generation electric car platform that would serve the needs of virtually every electric car manufactured by all the various brands within the Volkswagen Group. It would avoid the costs associated with using a number of different electric car platforms, including the Premium Performance Electric platform that will be the basis for the new Porsche e-Macan and Audi Q6 e-tron. Diess was heavily influenced by Tesla and wanted to build a brand new factory in Wolfsburg that would incorporate many of the advanced manufacturing techniques being pioneered by Tesla. Originally, that factory would be built and cars would be rolling off the line in 2026. Then Diess got the boot from the Volkswagen board and was replaced by Oliver Blume, who had been the head of Porsche. Blume quickly put the kibosh on the new factory idea.

Speaking at a celebration to mark the 50th anniversary of the Volkswagen Golf, Thomas Schäfer, the CEO of the Volkswagen brand, said the company planned to launch its next-generation electric cars on the SSP chassis in 2028. He didn’t disclose the name or any other details regarding the model that will debut the new platform. Volkswagen Group has said it will be a mechatronics platform with different versions for different vehicle segments. Originally, the company planned to put it into use starting with a highly aerodynamic sedan in 2026. Later, it decided to go for a more volume-focused SUV body style. But now Volkswagen says cars built on that platform will not come to market until 2030 at the earliest, according to Reuters.

In the interim, Volkswagen has created a new version of its existing MEB platform which will be used for an updated version of the ID.4 in 2026. In an internal document presented to the automaker’s board, executives reasoned there was no longer a need to release another larger car on the SSP platform immediately, and so pushed back the release of another ID.4 and SUV to the early 2030s, an unidentified source told Reuters.

German business paper Handelsblatt reported on Monday evening that Volkswagen was postponing the launch of the new models because of weak demand for electric cars and a need to cut costs. The company said earlier this month it would need to make significant cost cuts and reduce production capacity to revive margins in the face of slowing demand for electric cars.

Volkswagen & The Quest For A Modular Platform

If you have been following the EV revolution since the beginning, you will recall that early on, Faraday Future was telling anyone who would listen about how it was designing an electric car platform that would be adaptable to any size vehicle, from a sporty 2-seater to a 9-passenger people-mover. It could be made wider or narrower, longer or shorter. The battery could be made larger or smaller as needed. It reminds me of the lyrics to the Beatles song Paperback Writer, in which a desperate author pleads with a publisher, “I could make it longer if you like the style. I can change it ’round and I want to be a paperback writer.”

Canoo has taken that idea to the limit with its skateboard and top hat concept. In theory, someone with enough garage space could buy a skateboard and have a variety of bodies suspended from the rafters. Want to drive with the top down? Lower the roadster body onto the skateboard and off you go. Need a pickup truck? Off with the roadster “top hat” and on with the pickup shell. With Canoo, you can move the steering wheel and pedals to wherever you like, thanks to the “plug and play” capability of the chassis.

Volkswagen Group makes dozens of models, from micro-cars to limousines, and sports cars to SUVs. The stuff that makes an electric car work — batteries and their management systems, inverters, regenerative braking, cooling systems, and so forth — are pretty much the same regardless of what body goes on top. Is it really possible to make one platform that can be used to build a Volkswagen ID.1 and a Porsche Macan EV, an Audi A6 e-tron and a Cupra Born? That was the dream Herbert Diess had and it is one that dates back to Henry Ford’s original assembly line and the corporate structure of General Motors. Producing lots and lots of the same parts creates economies of scale. Producing a few of many different parts makes everything more expensive.

Software Is Key

Volkswagen is having a devil of a time getting the software piece of the EV revolution to work as intended. The original ID.3 was plagued with software glitches that made the early cars virtually undriveable. That’s when the Cariad division was created, but it too has suffered mightily as it tried to get a handle on how to make the “car as computer on wheels” concept function correctly. A lot of this has little to do with the functioning of the drivetrain and everything to do with making touchscreens and voice recognition software work.

Then there is the challenge of incorporating electronic safety systems such as emergency braking, lane centering, blind spot detection, adaptive cruise control, and the like into today’s vehicles and have them work correctly. Beyond that, every automaker is rushing forward with autonomous driving systems that utilize multiple electronic sensors and require enormously powerful computers to sift through all the input and make a coherent path forward that is safe for those inside and outside the vehicle. None of those things have anything to do with making a car that goes, steers, and stops, but they are vital to making the cars that customers want.

We all had such high hopes for Volkswagen when it pivoted from diesel power to batteries. We didn’t know it was going to take almost a decade for it to get its electric car act together. Now there is a whiff of desperation in the air and we are left to wonder if mighty Volkswagen will ever make the transition to battery-powered cars successfully, or become one of those legacy automakers that gets crushed by the EV revolution. We asked our resident Zen master about that, and she replied with Delphic clarity, “We’ll see.”