With the random trade wars the US is starting, it'd be crazy to try to export affordable products to the US. Local manufacturers will undercut you the moment you try. Probably better to export the already-expensive luxury products instead for people who are willing to pay the additional taxes as part of the trade-off.

I suspect at least part of the reason for that is the issues they've had with the vehicle https://motorillustrated.com/2025-vw-id-buzz-faces-stop-sale...

I’m seeing tons of ID Buzz driving around here in Scotland. I have a theory that people who would have bought a Y are now getting a Buzz instead because of the obvious reasons.

It is a safe bet that these won't come to the US at all. Those few of us in the US who like small cars are again out of luck. (though I have to admit despite preferring small cars I generally buy large trucks because the 10% of the time I need a large truck is enough that it is cheaper to use the large truck for everything and not have a car at all)

The second half of that sentence is the reason for the first half. A little more competition in that market and you'll probably see the price drop, although I think they've got at least 5-10 more years of it being an upper middle class statement piece.

They need to get the range over 300 miles. I'm on my 4th EV, and the Buzz just wasn't on the list due to poor range.

Now before you start going "but but but," remember that EVs very rarely get the rated range. They lose about ~15 percent after ~2 years, and lose a lot more in extreme cold. Furthermore, the ID.Buzz charges very slowly.

EVs with less than 300 miles of range are fine for a car that's used for local driving, but a van like the ID.Buzz is a road trip vehicle. It really needs a longer range version that can charge quickly.

The ID. 3 has been starting from under 30K since a year ago year so you'd assume they'd pitch this below that as it's effectively the ID. 2

I'd also like discussions of car affordability to shift to TCO unless there's been an announcement of free fuel that I've missed.

Even with the price hikes, Volkswagen is having to close down factories, do mass layoffs, and apply pay cuts to keep factories running. American exports getting hit by trade wars also don't exactly help, while at the same time cheaper Chinese cars are taking over more and more of their local market.

Volkswagen may not go bankrupt tomorrow, but it's hardly in a position to bring back pre-COVID prices. They were late to the electric car game which also didn't help with their market power.

Prices never go down. Neither central banks nor business owners want deflation, do mountains will be moved to avoid it.

I don't think they care. They are chasing the higher profit margins that come with selling "premium" models and sacrificing the budget market to the chinese.

Another point about the id range; they rushed it out with half baked software and UX. They probably resolved most of this but it's disturbing that they would do it in the first place.

Finally how much cheaper is electricity? Since 2020 the prices have more then doubled and the prices of charging in service stations are huge. I'm not sure that in the future private vehicles will be affordable as they are today.

Polo is the new Golf, in terms of price and dimensions. No idea why they do this weird shift, they look even more confused than me.

You just need to wait for the Skoda variant of this Polo, presumably e-Fabia or something.

I remember when the Polo was about 12k EUR, about 15 years ago!

I’m not sure which half of the name you find terrible.

I read it somewhat more positively (or at least clear in communications) as “ID. means electric” and “Polo” means what Polo has always meant in the VW lineup: their mini/compact entry-level car in the lineup.

They may just be backing off the ID.number thing. Their _old_ electric car name was the normal car name with an 'e' in front (eGolf, eUp); feels kind of like they're going back to some version of that.

Which seems sensible, honestly; ID.3 through 8 either currently exist or will soon. Who's going to keep track of which is which?

Terrible naming and EVs go hand in hand.

Tesla's S3XY is quite bad in that it's a shit joke and there's just a random number instead of a letter because you couldn't make it the Model E. And Cybertruck just completely breaks the form further.

Audi decided to name their cars "t-urd". They also blew their load early, since the first EV they made was just called the "Audi t-urd", and then they had to rename it to the "Audi Q8 t-urd" when they realised that they were going to make more than one EV model.

Mercedes-Benz decided that the electric version of the S-Class should be the EQS, the electric version of the E-Class should be the EQE, the electric versions of the GLS and GLE should be called the EQS SUV and EQE SUV, and that the electric version of the G-Class should be called the "Mercedes-Benz G580 with EQ Technology". Oh, and the electric CLA is just called the CLA.

BMW's lineup is pretty inoffensive in that it's quite logical, as the electric equivalent of the 4 Series is the i4, the electric equivalent of the 5 Series is the i5, and so on. Except that the electric equivalent of the BMW X5 is the BMW iX when the electric equivalent of the BMW X1 is the BMW iX1. Oh, and the BMW i8 isn't even an electric car – it's a hybrid.

BYD's electric cars also make no sense. Why does the same car maker have names like the "BYD Dolphin" and "BYD Seal" next to a car named "BYD Sealion 7" and "BYD Atto 3"? What determines whether or not a BYD model has a number in the name or not? And why is the fully electric one called the "BYD Seal" but the hybrid one is called the "BYD Seal 6 DM-i"?

Rivian's makes sense so far, since they have the biggest R1, the more medium R2 and the compact R3. But going by this logic, the R4 should be an even smaller car than the R3. Either that, or the numbering has no bearing on where in the lineup the car actually falls, just what was released first.

Polestar has that same exact problem that Rivian might have in the future: the Polestar 2 is smaller than the Polestar 3 and the Polestar 3 is bigger than the Polestar 4, and the Polestar 4 is smaller than the Polestar 5. And the Polestar 6 is probably going to be more upmarket than any other Polestar, except the Polestar 1, which isn't an EV. Basically, the number says nothing about the car except when it was first released.

The Toyota bZ4X, which stands for "beyond Zero" (as in emissions) 4 (from the similarly sized RAV4) "crossover", is also just a downright awful name. Same for the Honda E:NY1. I don't know what inspired these two to make such awful and complex names for their EVs.

And finally: the Porsche Taycan Turbo doesn't actually have a turbo. The "turbo" in the name just means "better" in the style of "TurboGrafx-16".

Yes, I could rant about car names all day long. Don't even ask me about how Ferrari names their cars.

Yep.

P/E ratios - VW 6 - BYD 13 - Tesla 200

Tesla's valuation is absurdly crazy.