Volkswagen is further cementing its electric vehicle development collaboration with Ford, according to Group CEO Oliver Blume.
On Tuesday next week, Ford will reveal its first all-electric car built on top of Volkswagen’s MEB platform.
Ford has previously said that using Volkswagen’s technology will save the company at least two years and has committed to spending over US$2 billion ($3 billion) to refit its production facility in Cologne, Germany, to build two MEB-based cars.
However, it has indicated it plans to reduce its dependence on the MEB platform in the future.
The American giant aims to develop its next-generation electric cars for the European market on a proprietary, software-defined architecture by 2030.
Despite Ford’s statements on being more independent, Blume emphasised that the industrial alliance between Volkswagen and Ford is likely to expand further in the future.
“We are only at the beginning of our cooperation project,” Blume said during the company’s financial results presentation this week.
Outside of electric cars and more relevant to the Australian market, the partnership between Volkswagen and Ford also extends to popular vehicles such as the new Ford Ranger and Volkswagen Amarok – which launches in Australia very shortly.
Both vehicles are produced at Ford’s Silverton Assembly Plant in Pretoria, South Africa, though local-spec Rangers are sourced from Thailand.
In addition to utes, Volkswagen manufactures the Ford Tourneo Connect compact passenger van in Poland, alongside its Volkswagen counterpart the Caddy. Ford Australia has thus far not confirmed whether it will bring the new generation of the Tourneo to our market.
The Transit Connect van, presently assembled at Ford’s Valencia, Spain plant, will be added later. Ford will also produce a variant of its new Transit Custom for Volkswagen at its Turkish factory.
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 started back in 2020, when the automakers announced they would jointly produce eight million commercial vehicles in total.
Apart from Ford, Volkswagen also supplies the MEB platform to Indian automaker Mahindra, which announced it would build five electric SUVs using the German platform. Volkswagen announced last year that over the course of the agreement, Mahindra’s XUV and BE brands would produce more than one million vehicles on its platforms.
