Volkswagen has outlined a plan to strengthen its place in China with an all-new platform for inexpensive electrical vehicles. The platform will likely be primarily based on native parts.

The information was shared on Friday by China chief Ralf Brandstaetter in the course of the opening a brand new EV growth and procurement heart—Volkswagen Group China Expertise Firm (VCTC) in Hefei. An funding of round $1.1 billion within the VCTC is anticipated to create over 2,000 jobs.

Based on Reuters, Volkswagen will develop a brand new entry-level, China-specific platform, at the moment generally known as the “A Essential Platform.” The main focus is on reducing prices, partially by way of utilizing an excellent larger ratio of native parts than within the case of the present manufacturing of the MEB-based fashions in China (ID.3, ID.4, ID.6, and ID.7).

The brand new platform will likely be derived from the Modular Electrical Drive Toolkit (MEB) and is anticipated to be prepared in 2026—a couple of third sooner than initially anticipated—because of the VCTC.

Ralf Brandstaetter defined that the Chinese language electrical car market was very “price-sensitive”, which requires optimizing prices. Let’s recall that the Volkswagen model is now not the best-selling model in China (BYD surpassed VW in late 2022), principally due to lowering gasoline automotive gross sales (EVs are a small a part of the model’s quantity and grew slower than anticipated).

Value cuts of the Volkswagen ID.3 mannequin in China already allowed VW to extend the gross sales quantity from a mean of two,200 items per thirty days to round 10,000 per thirty days (in July-October).

The brand new platform targets the entry-level phase with a value vary of $19,570 (140,000 CNY) and 170,000 CNY ($23,760). This might be fairly fascinating.

Based on the report, the plan is to introduce 4 fashions primarily based on the brand new platform and produce them by way of the present joint ventures with SAIC and FAW, that are additionally producing the MEB-based fashions.

On high of that, beginning in 2026, Volkswagen hopes to launch two further all-electric fashions, developed in partnership with XPeng. In complete, there could be six new fashions.

Earlier than that, by 2026, Volkswagen is anticipated to launch 10 new all-electric vehicles globally, in addition to enhance the pace of launching new autos.