Felix Lee Son of Wenpoo Lee (former VW head R&D), who was the first 🇨🇳 Chinese employee at VW and helped the company become a Chinese success story in a joint interview: "No Chinese would buy an e-car from VW today - BYD is too far ahead." "At the Shanghai Auto Show this year, people were interested in BYD, not VW. The Chinese presented eight models this year. VW only had the ID 7. There was hardly a visitor at the VW booth, while at BYD there was a big crowd. It used to be the other way around. That's a picture that clearly shows where the industry has gone in the last two years."

The SSP platform of VW is delayed according to reports of the Automobilwoche until 2029/30 and Audi plans now using an External Platform from a Competitor in China Originally, the successor of the MEB Platform plagued with many problems was planned for 2026 and we are now talking about 4 years of delay. Porsche and Audi were supposed to be the first to launch the SSP with Trinity and Artemis, and their delays led to the firing of former CEO Herbert Diess, among others. The new CEO Blume, however, is now also responsible for the delays through his dismissals at Cariad and will sooner or later have to explain the issues. The fact that further delays are occurring under his leadership shows that the problems at VW are deeper. As said many times before, VW does not understand software and continuous to miscalculate what is needed to make it work. As already reported by me, Porsche is investing in parallel in-house development of a software platform, since obviously the software group Cariad still does not deliver. This means that the CEO of Porsche Blume does not trust the CEO of the VW Group Blume who is responsible for Cariad. Exactly these conflicts of interest and the double role of the CEO leads to problems and were strongly criticized by the investors. According to reports from Automobilwoche, Audi is now planning to work with an external platform in China to compensate for the delays of the SSP. This would mean that Audi would produce vehicles on a third-party platform and only contribute the name, so to speak. According to the report, CEO Blume is in favor of this approach, which will be decided this week. The intended purchase of an external E-platform was made against the background that Audi must remain "capable of delivery" until the delayed launch of the VW electric flagship Trinity (and thus the new group platform SSP) and that the MEB is already outdated and problematic today. This is reported by "Automobilwoche" with reference to company sources. A corresponding proposal is said to have been prepared for an extraordinary meeting of the Supervisory Board this week - the meeting is "possibly" to take place on July 11, i.e. Tuesday. Volkswagen Group CEO Oliver Blume is said to have already approved the plan and Audi is already in talks with manufacturers. It's a desperate move to somehow increase sales but even with that move the problems of the VW Group are not decreasing but increasing.