Volkswagen confirms the death of the internal combustion engine

Wondering how serious the world’s biggest car-maker is about electrifying its eight-brand range?

Well, the Volkswagen Group has just laid down the effective end-date of its internal-combustion car development.

And that date is 2026 — just eight years from today.

In an interview with German newspaper Handelsblatt, the Volkswagen brand’s head of strategy admitted its next full generation of internal-combustion architectures, due in 2026, would be its last.

After setting itself to be the ground-zero of the crisis and implosion of diesel power, Volkswagen is determined to push harder into electrification than any other European brand.

“Our colleagues are working on the last platform for vehicles that aren’t CO2-neutral,” Volkswagen brand strategy head, Michael Jost, said on Tuesday.

“We’re gradually fading out combustion engines to the absolute minimum.”

While it already has the e-Golf and the e-Up on sale in Europe, the first wave of dedicated Volkswagen battery-electric cars will begin in a year with the I.D. Neo hatchback.

Promising Passat-style interior space from a Golf-sized hatch, the I.D. Neo will be followed by the I.D. Buzz van/bus, a pair of crossover/SUVs (including one previewed by the I.D. Crozz) and a large limousine based on the I.D. Vizzion.

Volkswagen has confirmed a €50 billion spend over the next five years on electrification, with its other brands pushing models like the Audi e-tron and e-tron GT and the Porsche Taycan and Cross Turismo already confirmed for the next two years.

Its plans call for the full or partial electrification of more than 300 of the vans, cars, SUVs, crossovers, motorcycles and trucks across its 12 brand lines within 12 years.

Yet the 2026 timeline isn’t the hard cut many people will imagine.

Volkswagen habitually employs its platform architecture for two full generations, rather than one. A development of the current Golf’s MQB architecture, for example, will sit beneath next year’s Mk8 Golf. If that’s the case, the 2026 architecture Jost spoke of would be perfectly timed to work beneath the Golf 9 seven years after the next Golf debuts.

If Volkswagen spreads that new architecture over two full model generation cycles, as it will do with the MQB, it would take the internal-combustion engine’s lifespan out to at least 2040.

Jost admitted to Handelsblatt that there will still be petrol and diesel engines operating in less developed markets beyond 2050, mainly because of a shortage of charging infrastructure.