VW has been investing in electric cars for some time. But money is still flowing into the development of combustion engines. That should be as good as over by 2026. Then the cash register should ring. For this, even the former goal of global market leadership is given up.
According to CFO Arno Antlitz, Volkswagen’s research and development expenditure, which is worth billions, will soon pay off. “We expect investments to peak in two or three years,” said the manager of the “Süddeutsche Zeitung” with a view to new software, battery factories and electric car models. “We will be able to harvest by 2026 at the latest.” VW would then have to invest “almost nothing more” in the combustion engine technology that is being phased out. “The double burden is eliminated and then we want to make a lot of money with electromobility,” said Antlitz.
The manager would also like to have corrected the “imbalance” on the stock exchange during this period: Currently, the ratings of Volkswagen and the subsidiary Porsche are almost the same – although the sales and sales of the parent company VW are many times higher. “We have to ask ourselves: How well do we explain our qualities to the capital market at group level?” Antlitz told the newspaper. “I am convinced that we will deliver within the next two to three years.”
In order to become more profitable and more attractive to investors, Volkswagen is abandoning the goal of global market leadership that the former VW patriarchs Ferdinand Piëch and Martin Winterkorn had set. Sales and turnover are “of course important,” said Antlitz, also with a view to the financial advantages of large production numbers. “But we agreed on a different weighting on the board: we focus on cash flow, i.e. on the money that ultimately stays in the till.”
VW wants to concentrate on the “most attractive profit pools”, i.e. the particularly profitable and at the same time in demand vehicle segments as well as the regions with the strongest growth. In addition to Europe and China, this also includes the USA.
