Volkswagen is further strengthening its electric vehicle development cooperation with Fordaccording to Group CEO Oliver Blume.
On Tuesday next week, Ford will reveal its first electric car built on Volkswagen’s MEB platform.
Ford has previously said that using Volkswagen technology will save the company at least two years and has committed to spending more than US$2 billion ($3 billion) to retrofit its production facilities in Cologne, Germany, to build two MEB-based cars.
However, it has stated that it plans to reduce its reliance on the MEB platform in the future.
The American giant aims to develop next-generation electric cars for the European market on a proprietary software-defined architecture by 2030.
Despite Ford’s statement to be more independent, Blume emphasized that the industrial alliance between Volkswagen and Ford is likely to develop further in the future.
“We are only at the beginning of our collaborative project,” Blume said during the company’s financial results presentation this week.
Beyond electric cars and more relevant to the Australian market, the partnership between Volkswagen and Ford also extends to popular vehicles such as the Ford Ranger and the new Volkswagen Amarok – which will soon be launched in Australia.
Both vehicles are manufactured at Ford’s Silverton Assembly Plant in Pretoria, South Africa, although the locally-spec Rangers are sourced from Thailand.
In addition to the utes, Volkswagen produced the Ford Tourneo Connect compact passenger van in Poland, along with its Volkswagen Caddy counterpart. Ford Australia has so far not confirmed whether it will bring the new generation Tourneo to our market.
The Transit Connect van, currently assembled at Ford’s factory in Valencia, Spain, will be added later. Ford will also manufacture its new Transit Custom variant for Volkswagen at its factory in Turkey.
Ford Australia has confirmed the diesel-powered Transit Custom delivery van will go on sale here later this year and it will be followed by the electric E-Transit Custom in 2024.
The most recent collaboration between the brands began in 2020, when the automakers announced they would together produce eight million commercial vehicles in total.
In addition to Ford, Volkswagen also supplies the MEB platform to Indian automaker Mahindra, which announced it will build five electric SUVs using the German platform. Volkswagen announced last year that during the term of the agreement, Mahindra’s XUV and BE brands will produce more than one million vehicles on its platform.