Amazing Scout EV is almost ready to order from Volkswagen

The old International Scout was a fantastic car for its time. It was a true SUV, and I think better than the much more popular Jeep of its day. And I know this because I worked on the family farm and we had Scout and a nice Jeep. However, the Scout was used the most because it was more reliable and the small pickup configuration was much more useful than a Jeep with a cloth top (especially in the winter when it was a ton warmer).

Fine, Volkswagen Group is bringing back the Scout in similar configurations the original Scout, and the company has unveiled production-ready concepts for the vehicle, which is expected to be released next summer. On paperthis electric SUV and small pickup will have one of the most aggressive pricing of any electric vehicle in its class. and, in my opinion, these concepts look quite good.

Why the original Scout failed

The problem with the original Scout trucks was their International Harvester parent. The car was exceptionally well built and surprisingly reliable, especially compared to Ford, GM and Jeep vehicles of the time, but you had to use a dealer network with International Harvester, which primarily made farm equipment. This means that being an agricultural vehicle you get the same service experience as with one of their larger industrial units where you would typically have a repair technician come to you, which made sense if you had multiple vehicles on whom they could work. or you have your vehicle shipped to the International Repair facility, conveniently located near heavy agricultural operations.

But let’s say you’re used to the experience you get from a Ford, GM or Jeep dealer. In this case, you probably won’t like the sales or service capabilities, since they were designed to deal with farms and large companies, not individual drivers. Waiting rooms were the exception, and these dealers were not designed to service road vehicles, as they were designed for agricultural equipment.

It’s a testament to the quality of the trucks that they sold 532k, but that was a paltry number compared to competing vehicles and work stopped after they retired. 1964 to 1980 (It’s surprising, given the volume, that the brand lasted as long as it did, but the trucks were simply amazing for those of us who owned them.

Volkswagen Scout

They use Magna International build this truck. Magna currently makes Mercedes-Benz, Jaguar (they built my electric I-Pace), BMW, Toyota, and Volkswagen (and they used to make Fisker electric trucks). To date, they have built approximately 3.7 million vehicles for various automotive OEMs and are considered one of the highest quality contract manufacturers.

As per the expected performance, the car will go from 0-62 mph in about 3.5 seconds, which is within the performance range of the car; The car will be equipped with tires up to 35 inches in diameter, making it a potential off-road beast (the all-electric version is expected to be able to climb up to 100% grades), 350 kW chargers and a two-motor drive system. The trucks must be able to drive into water up to 3 feet deep and are expected to have a unique front anti-roll bar for extreme off-road use.

The all-electric version should have a decent range of 350 miles, but they plan to release an extended-range gasoline version that will be able to travel up to 500 miles in a reverse plug-in hybrid configuration (typical plug-in hybrids have a low electric range). and massive gas range).

Summing up:

The Volkswagen Scout is available to pre-order today, and on paper it represents one of the best EV deals this side of China (and considering most of us can’t buy Chinese cars, that’s not a bad thing). One concern is that these vehicles will not be serviced at Volkswagen dealerships, but will use methods similar to what Tesla and Fisker originally used, where a repair technician will come to you. Considering how reliable electric motors are and advances in battery technology, assuming service incidents are infrequent and over-the-air updates expected for this vehicle are commonplace, this shouldn’t be an issue. But this doesn’t have to be agreed upon and is not always agreed upon, so we’ll see how the service works. This should be much better than the old International Harvester experience.

At the end of the day, this new Scout could be a killer EV in 2025, I hope so because I miss our old Scout and it would be great to see that brand come back. I liked it though Caterpillar pickup conceptthis Scout feels much more real, and its coming to market is a significant advantage.

Rob Enderle is a technology analyst at Torque News covering automotive technology and battery development. You can find out more about Rob at Wikipedia and follow his articles on Forbes, XAnd LinkedIn.