Volkswagen, the cost decreased by 40% in China following the example of Tesla

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Group Volkswagen it is on track to regain momentum in its main market, China, which reaches 3 million units, a third of its global sales. The first European manufacturer announced on Wednesday that it has developed a new architecture for electric cars with its Chinese partner at the beginning of the year) will allow it to offer electric and smart cars at more affordable prices in China, where a price war began with Tesla and. continues with the domestic giant BYD has been going on for more than a year.

Volkswagen has a plan to use Chinese Electrical Architecture (CEA) in the brand of VW EVs (electric vehicles) manufactured in the country from 2026.

CEA is expected to allow a 40% cost reduction for the Chinese-made platform compared to Meb platform it was made in Germany, reducing the number of control units, the company added. The architecture uses a supercomputer and local design to control all the electronics and realize functions such as autonomous driving. In short, we follow the example of Tesla, which has been in trouble for a few months but is still the market leader in this type of architecture, which reduces the wiring and components of the car to make it more efficient and cheaper. produce.

What does cost reduction actually mean?

Cost reduction comes from simplifying digital hardware: fewer control units and fewer chipsperhaps the same, which performs a single function rather than a series of activities, from infotainment management to climate control, from battery management to Adas (driving assistance systems), which are increasingly important.

It is a change of attitude in the design and production that indicates a new approach also for the suppliers of components and this makes us abandon the old practice of establishing on-board functions (probably paid as optional) as well as modules and control units. Now the digital and electric car 4.0, and we can see it from many new models arriving, is governed, as Tesla teaches, by a single main system, a single mother of all the control units, instead of thousands of modules that make it. until today, with a huge waste of microprocessors, used for few, or even only one, tasks, with poor integration and efficiency (which is the key to sustainability).