Volkswagen is planning to bring to market an all-electric vehicle for less than $22,500 under its low-cost Seat brand in Europe.

As part of its extensive electrification effort across all its brands, Volkswagen is working on bringing down the cost of electric vehicles in order to be able to sell millions of units by 2025.

Right now, the focus is on its MEB platform, which is going to support the launch of new all-electric vehicles starting this year with an electric hatchback.

The vehicles on this platform are expected to make it to market for over €26,000 euros (~$30,000 USD).

It represents some progress for all-electric vehicles, but it is still not reaching the lower-end of the market.

Volkswagen is reportedly working on a new platform that would enable all-electric vehicles to be competitive at lower prices and they are said to plan to price a Seat-branded electric vehicle on that platform for less than €20,000 euros ($22,500 USD).

The Financial Times reported the news after talking with Luca de Meo, Seat’s chief executive:

“The planned starting price of under €20,000 means it would be the cheapest electric car on the market, one that many ordinary car buyers could afford.”

After increasing deliveries to over half a million vehicles and raising operating profits, Seat feels like it can now look at other opportunities, like electric vehicles.

CEO de Meo said:

“We spent so many years trying to fix our things so we couldn’t afford to get into the hottest and most innovative areas. Now, because we are not busy with a fire brigade emergency, we can actually look a little bit more on the horizon.”

The first cars on that new platform coming “on the horizon” are expected around 2023.

In the meantime, Seat will also launch new electric vehicles built on VW’s MEB platform, like the recently unveiled el-Born (pictured above), a sleek new all-electric hatchback with 260 miles of range coming to market next year.

The vehicle will be manufactured at VW’s Zwickau plant in Germany, where VW also plans to start the production of its own all-electric hatchback based on the MEB platform.

Electrek’s Take

That would be pretty amazing because it implies volume production in order to achieve that kind of price point.

If it’s anything like a lower-powered and smaller version of this new el-Born, I think it could be a massive success.

That said, we are still talking about something that is 4 years away and a lot will change on the auto market in the next 4 years.

At that point, I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s actually some compelling competition with all-electric vehicles at that price point.

What do you think? Let us know in the comment section below.

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