Volkswagen ID Buzz vehicle.
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Volkswagen inadvertently posted a press release on its website a month earlier Monday, announcing a new name for its US business, Voltwagen of America, highlighting the German automaker’s efforts to promote electric vehicles.
A company spokesman declined to comment on the release, which was dated April 29 and has since been abolished.
A person familiar with the company’s plans confirmed the authenticity of the release to CNBC. They asked to remain anonymous as the plans shouldn’t be public yet.
The press release said the name change is expected to take effect in May, calling the change a “public statement for the company’s future investment in electric mobility”. It is said that all EV models with gas vehicles bearing only the company’s iconic VW emblem are said to be used as the exterior badge.
To “preserve elements of Volkswagen’s legacy,” the company planned to keep the dark blue color of the VW logo for gas-powered vehicles and use light blue to differentiate “the new, EV-centric branding”.
The press release states that Voltwagen of America will remain an operating unit of the Volkswagen Group of America and a subsidiary of Volkswagen AG, headquartered in Herndon, Virginia.
Volts are the derived units of electrical potential, also known as electromotive force, between two points. General Motors previously used Volt for a plug-in hybrid electric vehicle between 2010 and 2019.
The VW press release was incomplete, highlighting the need for an additional listing and photograph from the automaker’s facility in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
One name change would be the latest EV news from Volkswagen, which held a “Power Day” earlier this month to discuss their EV technologies. Targets were also announced to significantly increase sales of electric vehicles by the end of the decade. It is expected that more than 70% of the Volkswagen brand’s European sales will be generated in electric vehicles by 2030, compared to an earlier target of 35%. In the United States and China, half of all sales are expected to come from electric vehicles by then.
GM didn’t go as far as to change its name earlier this year, but instead announced a new logo and advertising campaign focused on electric vehicles. The Detroit automaker’s new logo includes its gm initials in lower case, with the “m” underlined as a nod to the Ultium battery cell platform that underpins the new electric vehicles. The blue letters are in a rounded box of the same color. It replaced a white GM that was underlined in a darker blue block.
