The next all-new Golf will be electric-only and the Polo supermini will soldier on until 2030 at least, Volkswagen brand boss Thomas Schäfer has revealed in a wide-ranging interview.
Speaking to five UK journalists at the Financial Times’ tenth Future of the Car summit, Schäfer was blunt that the SUV bubble showed no sign of bursting. ‘The trend is still there… If we take away, chances are customers will go somewhere else. The small SUVs – the T-Roc,anniversary this year – is becoming irrelevant and won’t exist in 20 years, asked CAR? ‘The Golf is a phenomenon. It’s a timeless car, ideal for anybody from a student getting into mobility to a CEO driving the GTI.
That’s 851,000 midsize hatchbacks across the group – but VW’s top-selling model, the Tiguan, sold 633,147 units alone in 2023 for comparison. ‘It wasn’t long ago that the company was a strong fanbase of non-SUVs, before 2015! But when we brought them out you could see the success, the Tiguan, T-Roc, super-successful cars, good margins.’
VW has previously intimated a swing back to its heritage nameplates, and the ID tag is likely to be phased out as core models are electrified.The Golf’s little brother, the Polo, will be a fixture in VW showrooms for longer now, thanks to the European Union pushing back tough emissions regulations from 2025 to 2030. Car makers’ protests that expensive exhaust treatments would have made superminis unprofitable appear to have been heard.