Yes, that’s right. But that can only work if there’s progress in meeting the CO2 targets i.e. year over year improvement in BEV sales. For now, I don’t see such traction. Volkswagen Group BEV share in Europe last year was 11.9%, down from 12.5% in 2023. To meet the target, it must increase its BEV share to around 23.3% (as per my calculation). Their decision to continue producing ICEs they had marked to terminate, makes the progress towards the target much harder.
Volkswagen brand will bring nine new models by 2027 including the ID.2 and ID.2 all priced at 25,000 and 20,000 respectively. However, considering the current EV demand situation and the fact that production usually starts slowly, I don’t expect the production of these models to pick up until 2028-2029. Even if we assume that the new models will add 200,000 units to the BEV pools and the existing models add 100,000 units, Volkswagen could still incur a penalty of around 500 million euros (excluding pooling). Given that Volkswagen Group currently sells around 20 EV models, achieving sales of 200,000 units for new EVs within a short time will not be easy.
So yeah, unless they continue with discounts for EVs and even consider pooling with other EV makers, beating their target using the “banking and borrow system” alone will be hard.