VW CEO: America due for Jetta Hybrid
Automakers seeking to corner the market on American
car leasing are using hybrids and fully electric vehicles to do so. To this end, ambitious German automaker Volkswagen AG has announced its intention to introduce a new hybrid Jetta and an unnamed electric vehicle to the American market by 2013, Bloomberg reports.
VW CEO Martin Winterkorn, who earlier in the year made the bold proclamation that VW will one day overtake Toyota as the top automaker in the world, claims that the new electric and hybrid vehicles will represent 3 percent of the company's global revenue by 2018.
While plans have not been set in stone, the news provider posits that the Up city car or Gold Compact are likely to emerge as the company's initial electric offerings within the next three years, in addition to hybrid versions of the popular Jetta sedan and Touareg utility set to debut in 2011.
Responding to criticisms that VW is late to the green car leasing game, the company claims that the delay was intentional.
"VW is trying to prove that being a latecomer isn't necessarily a bad thing," Christian Aust, an analyst at UniCredit in Munich, told the news provider. "They've rarely been the first mover, but have often entered the market with mature products. They've got a strong development department and their comfortable market position in Europe helps."
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