VW plans to license e-mobility chassis to competitors

VW wants to establish its newly developed underlying platform for electric cars as an industry standard by licensing it to competitors. “We want our Modular Electrification Toolkit (MEB) to be a standard not only within the VW Group,” the company’s head of strategy, Michael Jost, told Henrik Mortsiefer from the Tagesspiegel, adding that the automaker was in advanced talks with rivals. “This is a paradigm shift for us,” Jost said. “We don’t have an elite plan, but a plan for our society.” Ford is reportedly considering licensing the platform, Mortsiefer writes without revealing his sources. VW unveiled a strategic partnership with the US carmaker earlier this year.

The MEB is the basic building block for dozens of different electric models Europe’s largest carmaker plans to launch by 2025. Patrick McGee writes in an analysis in the Financial Times of VW’s MEB  strategy that the “skateboard chassis” could become the company’s true “Tesla killer”, as some investors and analysts think the VW chassis may give the German company a vital edge in the new era of battery-powered cars. “This potentially represents a mould-breaking move as, until this decade, car producers sought to distinguish themselves from their rivals by developing their own powertrains, which comprises the engine, transmission and driveshafts of a vehicle,” McGee writes.