RonDawg said:
f1geek said:
Maybe there won't be a 2018 e-Golf. Right now, the e-Golf is a compliance car (albeit a really good one, in my opinion) and it's possible that VW sold enough to get the ZEV credits they need for the next year or two.
That's a good point that I never realized before. VW may be one of the world's biggest automakers (always competing with GM and Toyota for the #1 spot), but in the US its sales are relatively small, only about 340k cars (and just 3500 of them as eGolfs) in all of 2017. To put that in perspective, Nissan sold almost as many Altimas in 2015, and that's just one of several models.
So VW doesn't need to sell as many ZEVs as GM and Toyota and Nissan.
I am not sure of the details, but the e-Golf may be carrying the burden of collecting ZEV credits for the combined volume of the entire VW Group - VW, Audi, Porsche, Lambo, etc. The new Atlas and Tiguan are doing pretty well, so VW really needs to plan ahead for the credits they will need. The slope of how many credits they need per ICE is getting steeper as the 2020's approach. Also, I'm pretty sure that people have received confirmation from dealers that there is US port inventory of 2018 e-Golfs.