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Comment by snsr | Hacker News Reader

I love it, but I don’t think these are even coming to the North American market.

The US is getting the ID.4 which is a compact crossover about the size of the Tiguan. It should look like their Crozz concept and should be revealed in February.

The President of VW USA gave an interview recently stating the reason why we aren't getting the 3. One segment sells 60,000 cars the other sells 5 million. I think the ID.3 could sell great here and capture a lot more consumers than the typical market segment. Oh well.

VW in the US seems to me to lately be directly targeting US cars rather than trying to provide 'european imports' to the USA.

There was some marketing language on their site a month or so back about the new jetta being 'blend of US and german' or something like that.

I as a mk6 jetta owner personally think it looks like a ford, and thus hate it- not that I hate fords, but if I wanted a ford I'd buy a ford. My VW is supposed to be minimalist and understated, not in your face BAM nacho cheese cascade hops double IPA and quadruple Decker cheeseburger.

Kind of reminds me of beige box apple back in the day going after the business market, or anyone else selling losing differentiation to go after market share..

The modern Ford alternatives (Focus, Fusion/Mondeo) are far more German/European, ironically. They were actually designed for the European and global market first unlike the American VW products, and the differences show.

That's sad to hear, Id actually put deposit on one right now.

There's dozens other people who would. Dozens.

They are not cash constrained and don't need your deposits. They missed out on a great marketing trick though: Make it exclusive.

Which begs the question.. why not? They would sell incredibly well. Things like this continue to make me question how committed these legacy automakers truly are in regarding to making and selling EVs.

Possibly they're constrained by battery supply, or maybe they don't think they can ramp up production fast enough to supply all markets at once.

We'll know they're really committed when they stop making gas/diesel cars (which they've said they're planning to do eventually).

Of course they are constrained by battery supply as a primary reason. The second reason is EVERY SINGLE EV hurts their dealers, because the maintenance is so much less. No spark plugs, mufflers, less use of brakes because of regen, no tune ups. They can still go wrong but so much is not needed in evs. Dealers make most of their profits from maintenance, and thus - they don't want them.

No, maintenance is generally done by separate auto shops. These do sometimes license the brand to become "authorized" but they definitely have nothing to do with car dealership.

Sorry but i disagree, this is widely known. A neutral article says half of dealer profit comes from maintenance. It doesn't matter that a lot of maintenance comes from outside shops. At the dealer, lots of profit comes from maintenance and that's drastically reduced with evs.

https://www.edmunds.com/car-buying/where-does-the-car-dealer... "So where does the majority of a dealership's profit come from? It's not from car sales, at least not directly. It's from the service and parts department, which accounts for the other 49.6% of the dealership's gross profits, according to NADA."

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