Volkswagen Is Stopping Its Range Extenders In Europe

Volkswagen announced that electric cars with gasoline engines, range extenders, would come to Europe, but nothing of the sort happened.

Volkswagen will not produce electric cars with gasoline engines for the European market. The executive director of the car brand, Thomas Schaefer, clearly indicated this in a new interview. He states that plug-in hybrids still make more sense.

He says that small gasoline engines, which are exclusively intended for generating electricity for electric cars, are meaningless in the European context.

– We have that technology in China. I’m not really sure about Europe,” he tells Auto Express. Volkswagen’s head of development, Kai Greenitz, is even more candid about range extenders.

– It’s the worst of both worlds: expensive, big battery, and expensive engine, and the range extender is always heavy, so it’s definitely not an efficient car.

However, everything seems a bit paradoxical. Even outside of China, range extenders are becoming the backbone of Volkswagen’s offering. The revived Scout brand, owned by the Germans, reports sales almost entirely of that type of car in the US.

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