Volkswagen will cease all racing activities and focus on pure electric mass production cars

A few days ago, Volkswagen announced that it would cancel all racing projects except ID.R and focus on pure electric mass production vehicles. Volkswagen said that this is part of the company's restructuring. In the next few months, Volkswagen Motorsport GmbH and 169 employees in Hannover will be integrated into Volkswagen in Wolfsburg.

Frank Welsch, member of the Board of Management, commented: “The deep technical skills of the Motorsport employees and the results achieved by the ID.R project will continue to exist in the company and will help Volkswagen to further develop based on the ID.R Building Efficient Cars”.

Volkswagen promises to continue to supply Polo GTI R5 and Golf GTI TCR racing parts, and the production of Polo GTI R5 will continue until the end of 2020.

Volkswagen Motorsport GmbH, Volkswagen’s racing company, has a history of more than 50 years. Polo has won four WRC championships, and Touareg has won three Dakar Rally championships. In addition, it also performs well in formula racing and TCR events.

Thinking about the slogan "Stay in the race" on the GOLF GTI TCR racing homepage, it's really sad to see it now. Including previously, in November, Mazda also announced that it would permanently disband its sports department Mazdaspeed. One can imagine how much pressure the electrification trend puts on transmission vehicle manufacturers. In the future, there may be sports departments or events we are familiar with that are submerged by the new era of electrification.

But the better news is that Audi announced two days ago that it will return to the 2022 Dakar Rally, and the new car will use a new hybrid system. According to Audi's plan, their pure electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles are expected to achieve about 40% of sales in 2025, and the extreme conditions of the Dakar Rally may help Audi's product technology.

This article comes from the author of Autohome Chejiahao and does not represent the views and positions of Autohome.