The electric rebirth of Scout, the common off-street SUV model, is obtaining real this 7 days as Volkswagen names Scott Keogh as CEO of its new spinoff organization. The former head of VW Team America, as in the beginning reported by Axios, pushed for VW to begin a new electrical truck line just after viewing a absolutely restored vintage Scout: “the rights to the brand had been just sitting down there,” Keogh explained.
VW acquired the Scout manufacturer by means of a 2020 merger of its commercial trucking organization Traton with Navistar, which the German automaker initially bought part of in 2016. In May possibly, it was noted that VW Group is willing to pump $1 billion into the new Scout brand and set targets to promote a quarter million electric powered off-roaders underneath the title annually starting in 2026.
With Keogh now leading Scout, Volkswagen’s management board in Chattanooga, Tennessee, placed all VW North American duties on latest South American VW head Pablo Di Si. “It’s time now to concentrate far more on the US market place and the US customer, and one particular piece of the puzzle, for guaranteed, is Scout,” Volkswagen Group CEO Herbert Diess tells Axios in an job interview. The company stated it will acquire “True American” electric powered SUVs and pickup trucks, according to the report, as it makes an attempt to restore a popularity that took a hit from the “Dieselgate” emissions scandal.
VW hopes that Scout will be the response to double its 5 per cent US current market share of electrical motor vehicles the automaker strike a roadblock this year just after providing out of all its EV choices — ID.4 and Audi E-trons involved — for 2022. In its earlier everyday living, Scout developed an off-road SUV to contend with Jeep in the 1960s and is now reborn as a enterprise that can prosper separately from VW (and perhaps go community alone) so it can try out and go head to head with electric SUVs and trucks that stay a well-liked category in the US.
It stays to be observed if Scout will style and design boxy retro-searching SUVs like the indefinitely delayed Bollinger B1 / B2 and Hummer EV or if it’ll stick to the traits of other midsize and compact SUVs with properly-worn nameplates like the Ford Mustang Mach-E and the new Chevy Blazer. One particular factor is for confident: the enterprise is reported to be operating on autos that are fantastic for camping, off-roading, or applied for get the job done — a very clear indicator that Ford’s F-150 Lightning and the Rivian R1T electric pickups are top targets.
