Volkswagen ID Crozz electric crossover concept updated at Frankfurt show

Volkswagen ID Crozz II concept, 2017 Frankfurt auto showGermany's giant VW Group has said, several times, that it will have 30 different electric cars on sale globally by 2025. Over the last year, it's unveiled three different Volkswagen ID electric-car concepts, two of them thinly disguised versions of future production models for 2019 and 2020. Now, it has shown an update to one of those concepts at...

Audi diesel: another shoe drops as top VW Group execs implicated

2017 Audi RS 7It has been nearly two years since Volkswagen came clean and admitted its "clean diesel" engines were actually quite dirty. In 2015, a VW engineer admitted the TDI diesel cars sold in the U.S. since 2009 were outfitted with "defeat device" software that let them pass emission tests, only to emit far more nitrogen oxides in real-world use. Two...

VW engineer gets 40 months in jail, $200K fine, for diesel cheating role

2015 Volkswagen Golf TDI SEFormer Volkswagen employee James Liang was sentenced in Detroit yesterday to serve 40 months in prison and pay a $200,000 fine for his role in the global Volkswagen diesel-emission cheating scandal. It was a stiffer sentence than expected for an engineer who helped to create software that controlled exhaust emissions only when Volkswagen and...

VW, Mercedes, Opel, Fiat launch buybacks of dirtiest diesels in Europe

2015 Volkswagen Golf TDI SEAlmost two years ago, the Volkswagen diesel emission scandal burst into public view, and nothing has been quite the same since then. The news that VW Group engineers had deliberately cheated on eight years of emission tests for the "clean diesels" sold by Volkswagen, Audi, and Porsche sent shockwaves around the world. Settling the criminal charges...

VW exec to plead guilty to diesel cheating charges after jail, house arrest

2015 Volkswagen Golf TDI SEIt has been almost two years since Volkswagen changed the prospects for diesel-powered cars when it admitted to eight years' worth of cheating on emissions tests for its so-called clean diesel vehicles. The effects of the German automaker's diesel scandal are still unfolding today, not only in the United States, but in Europe as well. Another...

Volkswagen’s 5 electric cars start in 2019: what we know so far

Volkswagen I.D. lineup, Photo: Groenl7As Volkswagen works to look toward the future, following its damaging diesel deceit, electric cars and plug-in vehicles will be front and center in its product publicity. The German automaker has already hinted at its future electric cars with a handful of concepts, but its first high-volume electric cars won't arrive until 2019. What do we know...

VW intends to price its ID electric car five-door hatchback aggressively

Volkswagen I.D. lineup, Photo: Groenl7Volkswagen intends to take on the growing global electric-car market in an aggressive way, given the automaker's range of I.D. electric-vehicle concepts over the last couple of years. While a complete portfolio of electric cars will eventually find their way into production, the first high-volume electric Volkswagen will be a production version of...

VW says it needs ’40 gigafactories’ for electric-car batteries by 2025

Tesla Gigafactory battery plant in NevadaVW Group remains one of the world's three largest carmakers, along with Toyota and General Motors, but the German automaker foresees challenges ahead. Specifically, VVolkswagen believes the industry will face a shortage of lithium-ion batteries if new investment is not made soon for additional cell fabrication factories, often referred to using...

All-electric VW ID Buzz Microbus confirmed for production

Volkswagen ID Buzz concept, 2017 Detroit auto showWorking to redirect attention from its diesel-emission scandal—soon to wind down in the U.S. but ongoing in Europe—Volkswagen Group has talked a lot about its future electric-car plans. It will launch three high-volume battery-electric vehicles on a common architecture over the next five years, and has now shown concepts for all three...

Will VW Group’s electric cars “leapfrog” Tesla by 2025? Poll results

2017 Volkswagen Beetle 1.8T S Auto GrilleLooking back from the 2020s or 2030s, it's entirely likely that the unexpected arrival of Tesla Motors was a major force—along with legislation, perhaps the major force—in getting legacy automakers to produce electric cars. Competition has always spurred innovation, and German makers in particular were caught entirely unprepared for...

Extent of Volkswagen diesel deceit detailed in new book

Volkswagen TDI 'clean diesel' television ad screencapIt's getting close to two years since Volkswagen admitted it had installed "defeat device" software on hundreds of thousands of diesel vehicles sold in the U.S. The fact that VW carried out the deception is a well-documented story, covering how the software worked, how the company cheated, and more. But what went on behind the scenes leading up to...

VW to Tesla: ‘Anything you can do, we can do better’

2017 Volkswagen Beetle 1.8T Dune Auto GrilleWith a new book imminent that gives new details on its diesel-emission cheating scandal, Volkswagen Group continues to struggle for positive corporate PR. Yet the company publicly appears to be confident that it has weathered the worst of that storm. Moreover, while its first high-volume electric cars won't hit the market until 2019 or 2020, the...

Volkswagen teases electric crossover for Shanghai auto show

Teaser for Volkswagen ID SUV Concept debuting at 2017 Shanghai auto showVolkswagen appears to be quite clearly committed to an ambitious program of electric cars following its diesel emission scandal. But aside from two adapted models launched a few years ago—the VW e-Golf and e-Up hatchbacks—and a few low-range plug-in hybrids, it doesn't yet have much to put in showrooms. Instead, it's launching a series...

After Tesla, which automaker is best in electric cars? Poll results

2012 Tesla Model S beta vehicle, Fremont, CA, October 2011Regardless of the number of cars they've sold—fewer than the Renault-Nissan alliance—Tesla is undoubtedly the best-known electric-car maker in the world. It delivered 76,000 cars last year, against roughly 10 million each for Volkswagen Group, Toyota, and General Motors. But its sleek, fast, electric Model S and the associated...

Modified European VW diesels ‘undrivable,’ say some owners

2015 Volkswagen Golf TDI SEMost of the Volkswagen and Audi diesel cars sold in the U.S. from 2009 through 2015 are likely to be bought back from their owners, probably leaving fewer than 100,000 on U.S. roads. That's not the case in Europe, where the impacts of the Volkswagen diesel emission scandal are still playing out. Roughly 11 million cars with TDI diesel engines were...

After Audi e-tron, next electric car to be compact BMW i3 competitor

2016 Audi A3 e-Tron Sportback, San Francisco Bay Area, Oct 2015Next year, the Audi e-tron luxury electric crossover is expected to arrive at U.S. dealers, bringing Audi into direct competition with the Tesla Model X roughly three years after the world's first all-electric utility vehicle went into production. But with a pledge to sell 25 percent of its cars with plug-in electric capabilities by 2025, VW...