VW Group in talks with peers to share electric expertise

Volkswagen Group is in talks with other manufacturers on sharing the key technology underpinning its future Porsche and Audi electric cars as it seeks to build scale and spread development costs.

“There’s definitely interest,” Ulrich Widmann, head of development at Audi for the joint engineering project, said at a press briefing in Munich. “We’re having conversations. Sharing technology to generate scale effects is the only way to achieve the turnaround in electric cars, both economically and ecologically.”

Widmann declined to identify manufacturers who have shown interest in adopting the so-called Premium Platform Electric underpinnings, which are being developed by Porsche and Audi as the basis for their full-electric vehicles starting in 2021.

“Given the huge research and development investment required for the transition to battery-electric vehicles, many smaller luxury names could be interested including Aston Martin, McLaren and Maserati,” Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Michael Dean said. “You couldn’t rule out BMW and Mercedes-Benz, which would provide a German premium solution,” he added.

VW is making an unprecedented push to dethrone Tesla as the leader of premium electric cars while at the same time keeping at bay traditional rivals that include Toyota Motor and General Motors. VW’s mass-market electric technology will debut with the namesake brand’s ID3 hatchback.

Deals to share electric expertise are already advancing, with Ford Motor Co. agreeing earlier this year to use VW’s main electric-car platform for a high-volume car in Europe. The pact is worth between $10 billion and $20 billion over six years and the manufacturers are in talks over adding a second model that would be based on VW technology.