1st EV Casualty of Trump Election: Volkswagen ID.7?

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There are experiences that the Volkswagen ID.7 is the primary EV casualty of the brand new administration and his plan to chop EV incentives. Volkswagen has determined to drop its plan to deliver the ID.7 to North America. It’s an enormous disgrace, because the ID.7 is the corporate’s flagship EV mannequin and it’s promoting very effectively in Europe — and even came in second place in the competition for 2024 CleanTechnica Car of the Year–Europe.

The ID. 7 has turn into Europe’s 6th best selling EVsolely trailing Tesla’s two well-liked fashions, the Skoda Enyaq, the Volkswagen ID.4, and the Volvo EX30 (the winner of the 2024 CleanTechnica Automotive of the 12 months–Europe award). Nevertheless, Individuals aren’t massive on shopping for sedans in the mean time, the ID.7 wouldn’t be low-cost, and as already famous, Trump appears to be like intent on hurting the EV market within the US — and we don’t know all the main points of that but.

That stated, I’m not so positive the ID.7 is the primary casualty. I feel another automakers made selections forward of time, extra quietly maybe, to not develop or launch sure EV fashions right here within the US. Even again when Biden was working for workplace and his possibilities of successful appeared extraordinarily slim, I feel automakers began making such selections with a purpose to not make a enterprise mistake or get on Trump’s dangerous aspect — however extra the previous than the latter. Firms hate uncertainty in a market, and Trump is bringing lots of uncertainty to the EV market.

On that matter, the ID.7 was really postponed for the US in Might 2024. So, maybe Volkswagen was already contemplating the election. “However, preparations were in full swing for the announced start of deliveries in the third quarter of 2024, and Volkswagen of America published the offer structure for the ID.7 at the end of March,” electrive writes. “Volkswagen wanted to offer two equipment variants, each of which could be ordered with rear or all-wheel drive. However, pricing and the official EPA range were not yet known and were supposed to be announced after the launch.”

That is additionally most likely one other hit to Volkswagen manufacturing unit jobs in Germany. “The change of plans for North America is presumably also bad news for the Emden plant in Germany, as there were no plans for North American production of the ID.7. That means that the vehicles for the US market would probably have had to be manufactured in Emden, as was once the case with the ID.4. In view of the political tensions between China and the US, it is unlikely that the China version would have been exported to the US.”

In fact, general, the US EV market is just not one of the best on this planet. It has not been a significant marketplace for most electrical automobiles additionally offered in Europe or China. It’s additionally nonetheless closely lopsided towards Tesla, despite the fact that Tesla’s share has dropped from about 80% to about 45% of EV gross sales. Total, although, it’s clear that Donald Trump taking workplace is dangerous for the electrical car market since he’s extraordinarily opposed to scrub applied sciences of every kind, together with electrical automobiles.

Sadly, we received’t get to check out the Volkswagen ID.7 within the US. However possibly that may change once more sometime down the street….