For over 25 years Volkswagen lied, cheated and deceived about the true emissions value of their diesel powertrains. They lied about the emissions ratings. They rolled out their over-educated men in suits to rubber-stamp their lies and the compliant motoring media gave them awards to celebrate the deception. The World Health Organisation estimates many thousands of people die per year in Europe from the effects of diesel particulates. But like a born-again Christian, Volkswagen has turned over a new chapter in its history. Or rather the EU told Volkswagen that if it didn’t embrace electric cars then it would be fined into oblivion. And you know what? we commend VW for developing a range of EVs so quickly. But they have a long way to go.
The pathway to mass EV mobility will be slow. There will be many pratfalls along the way, but eventually, VW will rise to the challenge because they have the best engineers in the world. And that begs the question, why did the best engineers in the world engage in dieselgate? We know it’s about profiteering but Volkswagen didn’t have to do Dieselgate at all. Had they used solutions already available to them, dieselgate would never have occurred. VW would still have made profits and the switch to EVs would have been delayed by decades.
And you know what? We (DCBHQ) went along with the deception, unwittingly and unquestioning. We accepted invitations to press launches, we attended the VIP dinners, we sat on the private jets. We drank from the corporate Kool-Aid, we were accepted into the ‘club’. We, in the smallest least effective way possible, fostered and furthered the corporate narrative. The motoring media isn’t the solution, it is the problem. Motoring journalists have become stenographers, and it is always the very best who are the most willing and most compliant. We here at DCBHQ are just too dumb to be journalists and even dumber to continue drinking the Kool-Aid.
And we all know, if they had the choice, Volkswagen would have continued with the internal combustion engine and lobbied against EVs. Which they have done in the past. But anyway, Volkswagen has managed to double global deliveries of pure electric cars. The demand was driven primarily in Europe. VWGroup, which includes Audi, Skoda, Seat and Porsche sold over 170K electric cars, during the first half of the year, a 165% increase during the same period last year.
Europe sold the vast majority, over 128K. Sales in the USA and China were up by 321% and 110% but in actual numbers, it represented over 18K sales for each territory respectively. The ID3 and ID4 made up the bulk of VW’s EV sales retinue. They say crime doesn’t pay, it does. And the irony is, the compliant unquestioning media has already handed out awards to rubber stamp VW’s holier than thou EV emancipation.
While the EV sales figure is impressive, it is not even a dent on VWGroups annual ICE sales which amounts to over 4M cars sold per year.
