Volkswagen starts offensive: affordable electric cars should conquer market!

Volkswagen starts offensive: affordable electric cars should conquer market!

Emden, Deutschland - In a brave step, Volkswagen plans to launch a number of affordable electric car models [^1^]. The car manufacturer does not make this decision without reason: the group faces great challenges, including cost pressure, increasing competition from China and the shadow of the exhaust gas scandal. These factors mean that Volkswagen has to realign itself in order to continue to operate Market Demand.

The electric car market has changed significantly in recent years. While the sale of burners and electric cars remained stable in 2023, there was a decline in e-car sales in 2024 after the state environmental bonus fell away. As reported electro-car-news.net, sales of electric cars in Europe rose by a whopping 113 percent in the first quarter of 2025. Volkswagen currently holds a market share of 26 percent, which underlines the importance of its upcoming models.

Future -oriented plans and measures

In order to master the challenge of market changes, Volkswagen plans to reduce around 35,000 jobs by 2030. This is to be done mostly through early retirement regulations and severance payments, while operating terminations are excluded. The works in Osnabrück, Dresden and Emden are about to close. Despite these serious changes, the company is aiming to achieve around 70 percent of its sales in Europe with purely electric vehicles by 2030.

In order to boost the sales of the electric cars, VW relies on attractive discounts of up to 6,000 euros on selected models. In May 2025, the market share of the VW ID.7 was 7.3 percent among the newly approved electric cars, closely followed by ID.3 and the Skoda Elroq. The planned new developments are promising: The Cupra Raval should be available in 2025 from 25,000 euros, followed by the Volkswagen ID.2 and the Skoda Epiqab in 2026.

market development and challenges

Development in Europe is influenced by various factors, especially by EU import tariffs on Chinese electric cars and emission policy requirements. Statista indicates that from 2035 no new cars with an internal combustion engine should be allowed, which reinforces the pressure to the automotive industry to drive the change to the electrical model. In 2023, gasoline and diesel-powered vehicles had less than half of the new registrations, which underlines a significant trend towards electromobility.

Although there is growing demand for electric cars, the infrastructure remains an important topic. At the end of 2023, the EU counted around 632,400 charging points, with about 60 percent of these charging points in Germany, the Netherlands and France concentrated. In some Eastern European countries, however, the expansion of the charging infrastructure is still slow.

It remains to be seen how Volkswagen will master the challenges, but the planned measures and new productions seem to be on the right track. The next few years will show whether the group can successfully master the swivel for electromobility.

For more information, read the articles on Merkur , ElektroautoNews.net and Statista .