Negotiations have been going on for a long time and now they think they have made a certain breakthrough. In NYC. VW CEO Herbert Diess meets Ford CEO Jim Hackett, who will give the introductory speech. He points to Ford's achievements in autonomous driving. These are based on their heavy involvement with Argo AI and if you look at their website it shows mostly self-driving Fords.

Hackett will only talk about purely electric vehicles later. But that is more the topic of Diess. The difference between the mutual investments, however, is that VW is investing a whopping $3.1 billion in Argo AI, of which only $0.5 billion are shares, Ford currently owns in the company. In return, so to speak, Ford buys 600,000 MEB platforms from VW.

Important, these platforms are expressly only for Europe, not for Ford's core business, e.g. in the USA. In addition, Ford invested $500 million in Tesla competitor Rivian a long time ago. They are obviously faced with the production of vehicles of a completely different order of magnitude. The largest battery capacity from VW is the smallest here. So it goes from 105 to 180 kWh.

There is also talk of cooperation in commercial vehicles in the deal between VW and Ford, but it is still unclear whether these categories are included or whether VW is expanding its platform upwards. In general, the whole thing still has to be examined and clarified under antitrust law. A signing will probably only be possible in just under a year.

Of course, the other part of the deal gives Ford a new perspective in Europe that was almost thought to be lost. The Ford plant in Cologne in particular can rejoice because the various car constructions for the VW platforms are developed there and will probably also be produced at least in part from 2023.

Herbert Diess seems to firmly believe in the vision that the MEB platforms will develop into a standard that will be accepted by other manufacturers and become cheaper. One would like to have a commitment for another 600,000. However, history shows that such joint ventures only last for a limited time. Remember the collaboration with Mercedes on the Crafter/Sprinter and with Ford on the Sharan/Galaxy.

But maybe VW is indifferent to that, because until Ford eventually pulls out, they are striving for various market leaderships and then need full production themselves. At the moment, however, the sufficient supply of batteries seems doubtful. VW still seems torn between building a new battery factory, investing in an existing one, or relying on suppliers.

Incidentally, both sides expect a lot from the MEB platform. So Hackett speaks of new powerful models of a 'Mustang' or 'Explorer' model or commercial vehicles. Diess also mentions motorhomes in addition to cars, etc., by the way, a market where VW is exceptionally not the market leader, but Fiat. But are the packs sufficient for this, which have not really proven to be a guarantee for reasonable ranges with the Audi e-tron?

What Diess says about the CO₂ shares is depressing. No, not so much for traffic, which then 'only' accounts for 14 percent of the total volume, incidentally including air traffic. If with traffic it's so slow, how long will it take for the other 86 percent? According to this, VW has a share of 1 percent through its cars, which it hopes to reduce to zero in the longer term. By 2030, 40 percent of these will be purely electric, around 14 million in total.