We keep hearing rumors it won’t bring the Tarok truck to the US but now, it looks like VW is getting serious about doing just that by making it an EV. According to Volkswagen CEO Pablo DC, it appears to be in the works already. This makes sense with the success of the road-showing Ford Maverick hybrid.
Will a VW pickup be based on a Scout EV?
Some have suggested that if VW pulls the trigger, any pickup it sees for the US will be based on the upcoming Scout platform, which is also an EV. But Di Si told Autoblog that if VW offered a pickup here it wouldn’t be a Scout. That could mean Volkswagen will do what most other automakers do, which is make a truck out of an SUV platform, or vice versa.
It will be based on the Tarok, which is based on the Atlas SUV. This also makes sense because Atlas, which is available here, is built in Chattanooga, Tennessee. So she can share this assembly plant without getting the dreaded chicken tax.
Will it be an EV Volkswagen pickup truck?
The chicken tax is a tax on commercial vehicles manufactured outside North America. With the tax, there is no way Tarok can be competitive. And since Atlas and Taroc share many components, the Chattanooga plant is now a part of it.
But the Atlas is not electric. And here’s another hint given by the CEO, who said it’s going to be electric. “Let me specify, electrified. It could be electric, or it could be plug-in. But it couldn’t be a combustion engine, that’s for sure.”
When will Volkswagen introduce a truck?
While it all sounds like years have passed, auto executives aren’t revealing much about future products. So with Atlas being six years old, you know a new release is already in the works. The update it receives this year buys it out for another two years. So while this isn’t four or six years, we won’t see it until 2025 at the earliest.
Volkswagen was in the maelstrom of electric development. With so many different vehicles out there through its Audi, Porsche, Bentley, Seat, and Skoda brands, there are plenty of bread-and-butter vehicles that take more priority. But in the US, it’s the biggest market. So to really compete here, they need them as much as they need SUVs, which are the main focus of development right now.
But the development of a new Atlas SUV makes it easier to combine the types of pickup trucks. So the timing of DC’s comments is cautious. Let’s just hope the company doesn’t take as long to introduce a pickup truck here as it did to get it. By our estimates, it took nearly seven years from concept to completion.
