Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles (VWCV) has launched a new division in which all activities on every aspect of future mobility services and the development of autonomous driving are being pooled.

It was announced as part of the company's GRIP2025+ strategy.

VWCV is taking on the lead role in the development of autonomous driving in the Volkswagen Group, in cooperation with Argo AI.

“Our vehicles are the logical first place of use for autonomous systems. We anticipate seeing autonomous systems from Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles in commercial use  by 2025,” said VWCV CEO Carsten Intra.

New Mobility as a Service (MaaS) and Transport as a Service (TaaS) offerings are also being developed by the brand at great pace. These include ride-pooling provider MOIA, which has started up in Hamburg and Hannover.

Due to the great significance of mobility services and of the potential of autonomous driving, VWCV is pooling these activities within a new division under the VWCV umbrella.

“This new division – which simultaneously forms the third pillar of our strategy – will account over the medium term for a significant part of our turnover and yield,” added Carsten Intra.

The company management has now also firmly anchored the sustainability goals in the strategy. In this respect VWCV is for the one part focussing on the electrification of the fleet, including with the new Multivan as a plug-in hybrid this year and the fully electric ID BUZZ next year.

For the other, the team is working on reducing the environmental impact in the production process. Included are a lower use of energy, water or solvent as well as the reduction of waste and CO2 emissions.

By 2025, VWCV will reduce this by in total 50% compared to 2010. In Hannover a reduction of 39% has already been achieved.