Volkswagen recently organised its first virtual “way to zero-carbon convention” to propose numerous plans to reduce carbon emissions from its entire ecosystem. In order to achieve that and minimise its carbon footprint, the company will introduce one electric vehicle every year and it would also invest €14 billion in decarbonisation by 2025 and €40 million in renewable energy generation through wind farms and solar plants.
The Deutsch carmaker targets to increase electric cars share from 35 to 55 percent in 2030 and to achieve the objective, it will have 70 percent new electric cars in Europe and 50 percent in the United States and China. The company guarantees that 9 out of 14 cars in its lineup will be electric by 2030 and therefore it will launch one electric vehicle per year. VW also already unveiled the high-performance ID.4 GTX yesterday.
Furthermore, the company plans to launch ID.6X/Crozz MPV exclusively in the Chinese market soon and also the ID.5 later this year and it would first be available in Europe and later in China. Moreover, the company intends to introduce the ID Buzz in 2022 and a compact car for the entry-level segment by 2025. A Modular Electric Drive Matrix (MEB) architecture will be utilised for all electric vehicles and the automaker promises that the battery would last up to eight years or 160,000km.
Volkswagen CEO Ralf Brandstätler presented a roadmap of the short-term goal in an online keynote convention. The carmaker has set intermediate goals to significantly reduce carbon footprint by 2030 to achieve an ultimate net zero carbon target by 2050. As European Commission intends to cut carbon emission by 55 percent until 2030, Volkswagen also aims to reduce 40 percent carbon footprint per vehicle in Europe by 2030. The CEO further said that the company created 369 million tons of global CO2 footprint in 2020.
The brand wants to focus on four important factors to decrease carbon emission from its ecosystem. It will be accelerating the electrification of vehicles, carbon-neutral supply chain and production lines, increase usage of green electricity and finally recycling battery for second use. There will be 300 wind turbines in Europe by 2030 and its solar plants' expansion plan would be able to provide electricity to fifty thousand households in the same year.
The automaker is aiming at 50 percent carbon emission reduction of its total vehicle production by 2025. Eleven factories of the company are already powered by renewable energy and its Zwickau plant is going to be the largest electric car manufacturing plant in the world in the coming years. Furthermore, all plants in USA, South Africa, Europe and South America (excluding the China factory) would be fully reliant on renewable energy by 2030. Volkswagen also plans to recycle 90 percent of the battery components for second use.
