Just yesterday I had the pleasure to meet and listen to the USA CEO of Volkswagen, Stefan Jocoby. Stefan was in town to speak at a National Car Showcase at the Convention Center here in Orlando this weekend. He was nice enough to stop by my university, the University of Central Florida, and have an intimate Q&A session with about 30 people. I was lucky enough to be one of those 30 people!
I wanted to recap some of the main points Jacoby touched on during the hour I had with him. With the Toyota crisis presently in the news on a daily basis and the economy looking to recover, this was an excellent time to talk to such a prominent player in the automobile industry.
Jacoby started out by relating to how without automobiles we probably would not see many of the huge corporations and businesses we are so used to seeing; like McDonalds and Holiday Inn for example. The need for INDIVIDUAL MOBILITY is such a fundamental phenomenon here in America and is now catching on very much in places like Asia and India. Volkswagen is trying to become the dominant force, the company people associated with “car buying” here in the future.
Some key points that Jacoby touched on:
- Jacoby said that he would love to see an International Standardized Regulation on car manufactures for things such as emissions for example. However, Jacoby knows this is just a dream but it is an important fact to remember when trying to dominate an industry internationally. You must always remember the laws here aren’t different than the laws somewhere else. And there are a ton of “somewhere else’s” in the world. According to Jacoby International inconsistency is the biggest obstacle facing VW.
- Volkswagen is not looking to necessarily use Toyota’s recent woes as a stepping stone on their route to success. Jacoby said that VW is staying humble and looking to increase their core strength to beat out competitors, that strength being QUALITY. In a sense Stefan was actually using Toyota as an example of what can go wrong when you don’t offer the market a quality product. You can have incredible features and a dynamic product line-up but if you don’t offer quality as your core component than you are positioning yourself for failure.
When asked what engine he sees a majority of the automobiles running on in 2020 he answered quite honestly, “the same ones we run on today”. With the recent craze over the hybrid and battery operated cars this could come as somewhat of a shock to some people. Jacoby explained that Americans are really quite funny people sometimes. When gas was at $5 a gallon cars such as the Toyota Prius and the Honda Fit backlogged for months; they couldn’t produce enough cars to keep up with the demand.
Once gas went back down to $3 a gallon Americans weren’t so worried about buying these gas efficient vehicles as they were just a few months earlier. Jacoby predicted that it would take a serious and lengthy increase in gasoline prices to spike a permanent demand for more fuel efficient technologies. He made the audience consider Europe; “You don’t see gas guzzling SUV’s over in Europe do you?”. There is a reason for that, their gasoline prices are nearly 4 times that of the US and it has been that way for a very long time. Jacoby jokingly and seriously said that gasoline prices are just “too cheap” here in the US.
His final prediction was that by 2020 5% of all vehicles sold in the US would be battery operated. “It takes a very long time too change fundamental thinking, you don’t just wake up and have the world running on battery operated vehicles.” There needs to be a major change in the infrastructure before that would happen. Where would Manhattanites charge there vehicles? I don’t see a bunch of plugs running down 5th Ave. right now, and they probably wont be for a pretty long time.
Finally, the Volkswagen CEO mentioned that VW is really trying to just get into the mind of consumers when they think about buying an automobile. “Branding is essential” said Jacoby as he mentioned VW’s recent Punch Dub campaign.
