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VW will invest up to $5 billion in Rivian as part of new EV joint venture (www.theverge.com)

submitted 9 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I could forgive VW if they actually did something to rectify the bullshit they pulled. Instead, the EV charging network they were forced to build out, Electrify America, is absolutely the worst of the bunch and frequently has at least a third of the chargers not operational. If I had to pick least favorite car companies, it would be between them and Hyundai/Kia. Hyundai/Kia would probably take it because they were the only brand who was dumb enough to not have immobilizer in their cars which has led to high theft and the other bigger reason would be them frequently being caught using child labor.

[+] [email protected] 6 points 9 months ago (2 children)

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago

Not only that, but they had to create a company/infrastructure that they had little to no expertise in.

I guarantee if you asked someone in 2015 "of all the companies out there, who do you think has the knowledge and expertise in civil engineering, US planning law, electricity infrastructure, and wireless communications required to build out a US-wide charging network?", very few would have come back with "VW would be great at that!"

I can definitely see the logic in it - it pressured VW to pivot to EV platforms, which I guess was the goal. But expecting them to be able to properly run a completely different business to what they have expertise in was always going to have problems.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

You aren't wrong, but also it directly impacts the company reputation. Doing it as absolute crap as they did hurts them. Not the whole industry, because looks what's happened since, the charging standards in USA went from CCS to nacs, all the manufacturers switched to using Tesla network which, checks notes is your direct competition.