Volkswagen continues with the Scout brand despite its agreement with Rivian

Volkswagen is still thinking about launching electric vehicles, even though its plans have changed drastically after the slowdown that has occurred in this type of vehicle market. So much so that it has just signed an agreement with Rivian to use the platforms developed by this company and thereby shape a new generation of electric vehicles under the German badge.

These new vehicles will presumably be an SUV and a pick-up powered by electric motors. But this collaboration clashes head-on with the 5,000 million euro investment that Volkswagen has made to relaunch the Scout brand. This is a brand that VW used a few decades ago in the American market and that has received an economic injection to become a benchmark in the United States again.

Scout is going to be the brand that Volkswagen wants to use to launch electric vehicles in the United States, so development has already begun on a platform to support both vehicles and proprietary software to manage the traction system. Even so, it is not ruled out that Scout will take advantage of the technology and software provided by Rivian.

The problem is that Scout vehicles must be priced in the 40,000 dollar segment, a figure far below the prices that Rivian charges for its models. So the future of Scout, despite the incorporation of Rivian into the development of electric vehicles for Volkswagen, could come down to proprietary platforms and software.

The differences do not stop at price, but the performance of Scout vehicles will be well below the R1T and R1S from Rivian. While these offer more than 1,000 CV, the forecasts for the vehicles of the German brand’s American division will hover around 300 CV.

All these differences may mean that Scout does not use the technology of Rivian or that it undergoes a drastic change to fit in with the plans of Volkswagen. Either way, it seems strange such a powerful double investment in electric vehicles by the brand, when it has already announced that it will not devote much effort to developing new cars of this type until the market gains the necessary momentum.