VW News: Volkswagen Could Sell Their MQB Platform.. For A Price

[William Maley]

William Maley

Editor/Reporter – CheersandGears.com

March 28, 2012

Volkswagen has a lot riding on their new MQB platform. It cost the company $79 billion to develop and will underpin a vast majority of the brand’s upcoming cars, as well as a slew of new models.

Speaking at the VW Group profits announcement, Michael Macht, the board member in charge of group production, said the company could sell the platform to other companies.

“The next two to three years are exciting for us, and during this time we intend to keep the technology to ourselves. We do not wish to share our excellence. But in the medium to long term we could sell the technology. We would have to look at the opportunities and evaluate whether they made sense.”

Its hard to see Volkswagen selling the platform to one of their arch rivals. Most likely, Volkswagen will sell it to an automaker that poses no threat to them

Source: Autocar

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[G. David Felt]

As big as VW is becoming and wanting to become, who would not be a rival? Plus I could be wrong here, but I thought pretty much all car companies had moved to universal platforms to be sold around the world so I just do not see this as that big of a deal. If anything, it would seem to say, VW has finally joined the party that everyone else already knew about.

[dwightlooi]

$79 million? That must either be a mistake or they have figured out how to really reduce their engineer costs. The Alpha platform that underpins the ATS for instance carried a $1 billion ($1000 million price tag).

[Drew Dowdell]

79 million wouldn't even pay for engine development...

[Robert Hall]

The original article says the platform investment was approx. 50 billion pounds, which is approx 79 billion USD.

Edited March 28, 2012 by Cubical-aka-Moltar

[G. David Felt]

The original article says the platform investment was approx. 50 billion pounds, which is approx 79 billion USD.

WOW, Guess they better find some people who are willing to pay to use the platform if that is really what they spent on it. That just seems way out of line.

[William Maley]

its been fixed..