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Comment by spockz | Hacker News Reader

Isn’t the id3 profitable? Maybe not by much but I can hardly imagine them selling a car at a net loss.

Edit: the id3 is the electric counterpart to the golf.

"Volkswagen expects to lose about €3000 ($4730) on every ID hatch sold, with profitability forecast to begin around 2025."

https://www.caradvice.com.au/751743/volkswagen-id-neo-losses...

Fleet emission rules have the weird (but entirely intended!) effect that they make it economic to sell (nominally or actually) low emission cars at a loss if they compensate highly profitable high-emission cars elsewhere in the portfolio.

Originally this meant that small economy cars got subsidized by expensive guzzlers, but with regulations clamping down on emissions ever harder and with the "Tesla insight" that electric cars just don't work on a budget (not just plain battery cost, also what if you don't have a convenient garage and all that), it's flipping over to electrics from the premium brand in the portfolio cross-subsidizing ICE for the less affluent (e.g. Audi electrics compensating for Seat four cylinders)

They claim it will be profitable. And it may be right now…

…given they are only selling the most expensive model, at $42,000. (Before tax credits.) That’s a fair bit more expensive than a gas Golf.

https://www.caranddriver.com/reviews/a33540804/2021-vw-id3-e...

In the Netherlands the base Golf starts at €27k. When you customise that to the trim you get stock on the id3 st/plus (st little less, plus more advanced extras) you get to €42382 (config code 8N1B7B) which is not that different from the €43k for the ST and €44k for the Plus.

I can imagine that the Golf being known tech will have a larger profit margin indeed. In the other hand, most of the extras in the id3 are shared technology anyways.

yikes, you'd have to be really committed to buying an EV to choose that over a golf R at that price. I guess the tax credit softens things a bit.

And I’m sure the CO2 taxes and fuel taxes in Europe weight the equation as well. But yeah, quite the price difference at the sticker.

See my other comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25876431, at least in the Netherlands the price difference for the same trim is negligible. Moreover, you might still be eligible for the €4K subsidy from the government.

maybe not by itself, but it reduces the average emissions for the fleet so they are able to sell other vehicles with more margin.

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