> They are chasing the higher profit margins that come with selling "premium" models and sacrificing the budget market to the chinese.
Well, also, they've been increasingly pushing cheap stuff out of the VW brand over the last decade or so. I'd suspect that, when the dust settles, they'll have something around the 20k mark, but it'll be Skoda or SEAT, not VW.
> Finally how much cheaper is electricity? Since 2020 the prices have more than doubled and the prices of charging in service stations are huge.
This may be a regional-differences thing (in particular, I bet it differs at least in timing based on whether you're in a mostly-wind country or a mostly-solar country), but at least in Ireland you can sign up to an electricity plan that gives you electricity for like 8 cent/kWh at 02:00-04:00 (vs ~30c at peak times and ~15c at night); this is explicitly marketed at electric car users. Here's a fairly typical example; note that it actually has EV in the name (though it doesn't actually require one or anything). https://www.electricireland.ie/residential/electricity-and-g...
Unfortunately VW is the only brand of the above they bring to the US. On this side of the pond we don't get the option to buy those others. (unless you import it yourself, but you have to be rich to pay all the costs - last I heard you would have to import 10 for crash testing, and I don't know what else is needed)
Well, also, they've been increasingly pushing cheap stuff out of the VW brand over the last decade or so. I'd suspect that, when the dust settles, they'll have something around the 20k mark, but it'll be Skoda or SEAT, not VW.
> Finally how much cheaper is electricity? Since 2020 the prices have more than doubled and the prices of charging in service stations are huge.
This may be a regional-differences thing (in particular, I bet it differs at least in timing based on whether you're in a mostly-wind country or a mostly-solar country), but at least in Ireland you can sign up to an electricity plan that gives you electricity for like 8 cent/kWh at 02:00-04:00 (vs ~30c at peak times and ~15c at night); this is explicitly marketed at electric car users. Here's a fairly typical example; note that it actually has EV in the name (though it doesn't actually require one or anything). https://www.electricireland.ie/residential/electricity-and-g...