The future for small cars with combustion engines does not seem to be very rosy in the VW Group – Euro 7 is probably just too expensive, isn’t it?
(Motorsport-Total.com/Motor1) – You may still remember: As with all its predecessors, the current generation of the Skoda Fabia (buy a used Skoda Fabia car now) should also have a practical station wagon. The family Fabia was even officially announced in November 2020 by the then CEO and current Volkswagen boss Thomas Schäfer. A good year later, nobody wanted anything more to do with the small station wagon. The project was scrapped.
The Czechs also made this decision to prepare for stricter emission regulations. Now, a good year and a half later, it looks as if the normal Fabia hatchback is also in danger.
In a conversation with Autocar, current Skoda boss Klaus Zellmer admitted that the necessary updates for the Fabia to be Euro 7-compliant would make the small car too expensive and discourage customers from buying it. Should the regulation come into force as planned, “it will not be possible” to offer the B-segment Mini at an affordable price. If that sound sounds familiar, it’s because Volkswagen said exactly the same thing about the mechanically related Polo.
In this context, we should also not forget that Audi is following the same path. The A1 will be discontinued after this generation. It looks like VW is tinkering with a not-so-distant future without small cars with internal combustion engines.
Seat has not yet announced how the Ibiza will continue, but what happens to Seat is a completely different piece of paper. We wouldn’t necessarily expect a rosy future for the brand. The former sub-brand Cupra is developing splendidly and seems to be making Seat more and more unsexy and dispensable.
Volkswagen says you would have to increase the price of the Polo by 5,000 euros if you made it Euro 7-ready. That should probably also apply to Fabia and Ibiza, after all, all three are based on the MQB-A0 platform, which the larger Skoda Scala also uses.
Interestingly, the European Union says that Euro 7 compatibility would only cost manufacturers 304 euros per car. Someone clearly has their math out of control here.
Fabia, Polo and Ibiza will soon also have internal competition from the small electric cars that the various group brands want to launch in 2025. At a starting price of 25,000 euros.
The associated studies Skoda Small, VW ID.2all and Cupra UrbanRebel have already been shown to us. After all, the combustion trio no longer has to worry about the Ford Fiesta. The extremely popular small car from Cologne will be canceled this year without replacement.
