As the “electric vehicle transition” continues to implode due to an emphatic consumer rejection of EVs, legacy automakers have had to deal with a glut of unsold and unwanted electric cars. Coincidentally, whenever there is a need to suspend EV assembly lines due to the glut of unsold inventory, there always seems to be an accompanying cover story that provides a different reason for halting EV production.
Volkswagen is the latest legacy auto manufacturer to suspend its EV assembly line here in the US. Hundreds of employees are being furloughed, and if Volkswagen ever resumes EV production, it will not be until 2025 at the earliest. VW is blaming this all on door handles, not on the collapse in sales of its electric ID.4 car.
It is worth noting that in 2019, VW CEO Herbert Diess promised an all-electric future for VW, and it built a new electric vehicle assembly plant in Tennessee, which started production in 2022. Of course, the Republican-controlled state government in Tennessee gave VW $50 million of taxpayer money to build the plant that is now suspending EV production. Corporate-communism (re-distributing wealth from individuals to government-favored corporations) is alive and well in Tennessee.
The ID.4 had been imported from Europe for several years prior to the launch of US assembly, but consumers never really warmed to the car in the first place. Less than 10% of VW’s 2023 US sales were EVs, before EV sales plunged 28% in 2024 from the already anemic baseline.
“U.S. Volkswagen ID.4 Sales Continued to Decrease in Q2 2024” [Inside EVs – 7/03/2024]
The ID.4's share in Volkswagen's total sales amounted to 5.7%, down noticeably from 8.7% a year earlier.
Volkswagen’s Tennessee EV plant had an original production goal of 90,000 units in 2023, to rise even higher in 2024. But through the first half of 2024, VW had sold less than 12,000 electric vehicles in the US, which annualizes to less than 24,000.
News about Volkswagen halting EV production broke last week, in association with a recall involving faulty door handles – a problem that for some peculiar reason is unique to VW’s electric cars but doesn’t affect its gas-powered cars.
Volkswagen plans to temporarily halt ID.4 production at its Chattanooga, TN, plant following a nationwide recall involving nearly 100,000 models. According to a VW statement, roughly 200 workers will be furloughed at the plant.
According to Volkswagen, the production halt could last until the beginning of next year as it works to resolve the issue.
A story in KBB states that Volkswagen EV production is not expected to resume until 2025. Interestingly, it also notes that while ID.4 production is being halted indefinitely, ”[Volkswagen] hasn’t told people who already own ID.4s to stop driving them.”
As I alluded to earlier, there is precedent for “quality” or “supply chain” issues being promoted as the reason for stopping production of unwanted EVs.
Earlier this month I discussed how Rivian stopped production of its Amazon delivery van after a series of spontaneous fires involving these vans. Rivian blamed the production shutdown on “supply chain issues,” but somehow those supply chain issues only affect the Amazon delivery vans that keep combusting. Tellingly, Rivian refused to disclose which parts are snared in the supply chain.
About a year ago, Ford found itself with an unsellable glut of electric 2023 F150 Conflagrations Lightnings and nowhere to put the 2024 year-model vehicles that were about to start production. So, Ford suspended production and stated that the reason was “additional quality checks” without stating what the “quality” issue was. Ford also stated that it was “working to match its 2023 supply with demand as the company prepares to change over to 2024 Lightning production.” I wrote at the time, “Let me translate. What would have been year-model 2023 electric pickups are now going to be year-model 2024 electric pickups (after their ‘additional quality checks’
so as to ensure that there is not a glut of unsold prior-year model Lightnings…”
Returning to Volkswagen, it makes outstanding gasoline-powered vehicles right here in the United States. It also terminated its relationship with destructive enviro-leftist CEO, Herbert Diess, back in 2022.
With the likely defeat of the Biden-Harris administration in a few weeks, and the subsequent dismantling of the EV agenda and mandates, VW has an opportunity to re-focus on selling great German-engineered cars, powered by gasoline, and assembled right here in the United States. It even has an available plant to use for that purpose.
[buck.throckmorton at protonmail dot com]