Herbie left VW without giving us an electric love bug

Herbie left VW without giving us an electric love bug

I know I’m not the only one here who feels an emotional connection to the VW Beetle. My mother grew up on the back and my grandfather used to love them. I’m a fan of the Love Bug movies and ended up getting a newer version of the Beetle (sadly out front) and adding pictures to it to make it look like Herbie, the star of the Love Bug movies. It was the first turbocharged car I had and I had a lot of fun driving it on mountain roads in New Mexico.

We even took it to an enthusiastic gathering in Roswell where we saw all kinds of New Beetles. For the show part of the event I put a bunch of bananas on the car to show that our Herbie had gone mad. To make it more authentic, we got a custom plate for the car with the same license plate as Herbie in the original Love Bug movies (OFP 857, which probably stands for Our First Production, August 1957, when Disney made their first live-action movie).

I don’t live in California, but we managed to get a board with the right colors to match Herbie’s board, but with some red and green New Mexico chiles in the bottom (scroll down to see a photo to see). I was tempted to start calling him Heriberto.

We had a lot of fun with the car, but unfortunately life took us in different directions, and my family had to give up Herbie too early for something with more seats. It didn’t seem too bad at the time. We had an electric car in the driveway that I could still have some fun with, and we figured eventually an electric bug might come out and we could make another Herbie, but with torque.

We really weren’t foolish in thinking this. It didn’t take long for small rumors and statements to come out of Volkswagen. At one point, Diess said, “If we wanted to make a Beetle EV, it would be much better than the current model, much closer to history, because it could be rear-wheel drive.” And that idea was exciting. Having an electric beetle with rear-wheel drive instead of front-wheel drive would be much more authentic than the original, but also be futuristic and have a low torque that Beetles never had.

We knew something like this wouldn’t happen anytime soon. Companies must first create models that they can sell in large quantities, and that’s exactly what Diess and others said. So eventually we would start to see more “emotional” cars and other niche vehicles that would be sold in lower volumes.

We got even more hope then we started seeing things like the ID.Buggy. A dune buggy is of course not a VW Beetle, but it used to be based on a Volkswagen chassis, hence the name. The VW platform proved versatile in other ways as well, with cars like the Karmann Ghia sharing the platform. Like the old Beetle, VW’s MEB platform is quite easy to adapt to other applications, including: even power boats.

This left a lot of room to eventually hope for a new electric Beetle.

Herbie teasing about Herbie

While I have no choice but to wait for a new CBG Beetle, that doesn’t mean I have to wait patiently. I’ve regularly pestered Herbert Diess on Twitter asking if Herbie can help us create a new Herbie:

Although we gave up on the bug for practical reasons, we kept the license plate on our Jetta so we can keep the license plate for our future electric Beetle. We’re going to hold the board until we have another Beetle to set it up.

So in case you didn’t know, we’re very serious about this.

Now Herbie (Diess) is leaving Volkswagen

Now we hear news that the CEO who led Volkswagen from Dieselgate disgrace to a potentially serious player in EVs is out of business. There’s a lot of speculation about why this happened which I don’t want to get into but one idea is that the company needed an outsider to put it through a rough patch and get away from a bad reputation and Diess was the man. When that’s over, it’s time to re-deploy ‘business men’ like Oliver Blume.

So this leaves open the question of where the company will go.

On the one hand, under new leadership, they could further accelerate the adoption of electric vehicles. Blume has in the past expressed support for taking the role of VW Group he led (Porsche) all-electric. So if he backs EVs, we could get to the point where an electric beetle and other low-volume “emotional” cars become a reality. That would be great.

On the other hand, the “company men” could be read to step on the brakes in electric driving. As every other automaker has shown, moving from combustion engine cars to electric is not easy. It requires reinvesting profits from gas-powered cars to their own demise rather than putting money in the hands of investors or setting more aside for a rainy day. Ultimately, the new leadership could never get as far as making an electric Beetle.

Those are clearly the best and worst scenarios for a future electric beetle, with the truth probably somewhere in between. The truth is that at this point we don’t know what to expect from Volkswagen under new leadership and if we will see anything different.

Companies should remember that emotional cars sell the Milquetoast

If I could tell the new management one thing it would be to remember the old auto industry adage: “Race on Sunday, sell on Monday.” The profits of small volume enthusiasts’ cars may not prevail, but they can draw a lot of good attention to a brand that helps the more utilitarian cars to sell well. Corvettes help sell Cavaliers (or whatever GM’s low-end car is now). Mustangs help sell EcoSports. So Beetles could help sell boring ID.4s.

But bean counters can easily forget that. The underperforming models don’t look great on paper, but you can’t express emotion in numbers.


 

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