They didn’t know.
The reasonable approach to EVs becoming economically feasible would have been to cut through the noise and treat it as an add-on to the existing portfolio without compromising the core competence: internal combustion engines.
This they knew.
Dieselgate put them in a hopeless position in the discussion around all encompassing electrification demanded by the governent plus the greedy, short sited pressure from markets.
This led to massive (and forced) investments rushing out electric models nobody asked for by the dozens.
Compromising quality and a sound growth strategy along the way.
The worst possible timing for Dieselgate to hit - steering a whole country and all industry-related countries into an existential crisis.
It is delusional to think german car manufacturers will be anywhere near competitive in the much simpler EV mass(!)market - so thinking to order a whole industry, which is built around a way different technolocal foundation, to just make electric cars from now on without really looking into a viable charging infrastructure is still beyond me.
Plus ICE cars won’t be going away anytime soon and very few have the balls to call this out.
>The worst possible timing for Dieselgate to hit
WHY?! Dieselgate would have been the perfect time for VW to justify abandoning ICE, especially diesel, and shift to fully electric. But no, they just doubled down on ICE and diesel engines. You can't fix stupid.
Of course, in practice, VW couldn't have done that due to it being run by ICE unions who want to keep their jobs at all cost. Maybe they could have spun off the EV business into a new car brand without the shackles of the unions tying them down to dated tech.
It's not just the unions wanting to keep ICEs which are far from dated plus absolutely necessary to keep and further develop.
A monolithic EV-only approach simply isn't feasible since not everyone can switch to an EV - above all, the current state of charging infrastructure is lightyears behind.
Ditching ICEs is the worst thing that could happen. It's really just common sense that happens to be unpopular.