Volkswagen now has a plan to bring back the Scout brand as an electric, rugged, off-roader line. There should be 1) an SUV, and 2) a truck model to start things off, scheduled to hit in 2026. These will be made in America, for the American market. Interesting.
If you’re familiar with S3 Magazine, you already know we’re not blindly optimistic for the big no-questions-asked switchover to EV.
We think that there are still a lot of unknowns, and that there is increasing political manipulation going on, and vehicles being rushed to market. In S3’s opinion, the best path forward is to let internal combustion and EV platforms compete freely & fairly in the market. Let the consumers ultimately decide what they want. And let the competition between ICE and EV make both ICE and EV better for the future.
But this Volkswagen/Scout news is a little different & more exciting to us.
See, aside from the points mentioned above, the EVs that have been introduced to market thus far are just dorky & boring. As a whole, they are soulless, awful, smug, overly-sanitized, pricey creampuffs with no personality. But it doesn’t have to be that way. The future of EV does not have to be ‘pods with screens’. It can be more visceral & gritty than that. And if VW & others want to start naturally winning over American buyers, they need to recognize that.
Volkswagen is not known for rugged trucks & 4x4s.
And the EV generation of Scouts need to do more than just look the part. They need to actually be rugged, tough, and functional. NOT just a rugged body on some Volkswagen ID platform. But the thing is, we actually have confidence that VW can pull this off. And that it could actually be a win-win-win for buyers, for EV perception, and for Volkswagen’s image here in America.
Scout info from Volkswagen Newsroom
