Cooperation between Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles and Ford enters next stage with three vehicle projects

A special moment for all of us: The Ford Motor Company and Volkswagen Group today signed the agreements for a further cooperation. Together we will meet rapidly evolving needs of their respective customers in Europe and other regions by leveraging complementary strengths in midsize pickup trucks and commercial and electric vehicles. The collaboration with Ford is a key building block of our GRIP 2025+ strategy and part of the current transformation of Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles. This long-term cooperation with Ford will strengthen our very good position in area of light commercial vehicles, especially in our core European markets, and is proof that we are successfully implementing our plan step by step.

The alliance will:

? Produce a medium pickup truck engineered and built by Ford, for sale by Volkswagen as the Amarok starting in 2022 within the Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles lineup

? Further strengthen the commercial-vehicles businesses of both companies as early as 2021 – with a city delivery van based on the latest Caddy model, developed and built by Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles and later a 1-ton cargo van created by Ford, and

? Lead to a highly differentiated Ford electric vehicle for Europe by 2023 built on Volkswagen’s Modular Electric Drive, or MEB, platform, expanding on Ford’s zero-emission capabilities in the region

Our both companies anticipate continued growth in global industry demand for commercial vehicles and for high-performing electric vehicles to add valuable scale to their individual product portfolios. During the lifecycles of the products, we expect to produce up to a combined 8 million of the medium pickup truck and both commercial vans included in the commercial relationships.

Besides Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles is responsible within the Volkswagen Group for the development of autonomous driving in the MaaS and TaaS field for automation level 4. In 2022, we will be deploying a self-driving vehicle fleet in real conditions for the first time. This test will be the first level-4 deployment using our fully electric ID.BUZZ vehicles. We’ll be collaborating closely on this with the ARGO team, that is going to take a leading role in the development of self-driving systems in the entire industry, from which we all will benefit greatly.