I Bet Scout Will End Up Selling A Fully Gas-Powered Audi Before It Ever Sells A Fully-Electric Truck

I think the VW ID.Buzz might end up being the poster child for everything wrong with Volkswagen’s thinking over the last few years. A true grey-space idea with a strong design and a lot of, well, buzz, that was doomed by poor execution, extensive delays, and a wrong-headed commitment to a single power source. Is Scout next?

The Morning Dump today is going to focus on the space in between a good idea and the final product, which is where Scout seems interminably stuck. There’s now a report out there indicating that Audi might end up building a fully gas-powered version on the same Scout platform, and maybe Porsche, all of which might delay an EV version.

Nissan is going the opposite way, having realized a little too late that it needs a hybrid and therefore rushing the Rogue Hybrid to market. If you want to buy one, be warned, they aren’t going to have a lot of them. Is that a better or worse strategy? Nissan and Honda were going to merge, but that didn’t happen, and now the two finally have found something to do together.

Gas prices are high, and with renewed trouble in Iran, may stay high for a while. There was a plan to lower fuel prices through “Freedom Fuel” stations, which is maybe a good idea, though it wasn’t clear how this lower-cost fuel was being subsidized. It sounds like one way this occurred was by not paying for the fuel. Genius!

Honestly, Maybe Just Never Build The BEV Scout

Here’s a crazy thought: Don’t build the fully-electric Scout. Maybe build it eventually, one day, when solid state batteries are a thing. Just don’t do it now. I don’t think that many people will buy it and Scout’s parent company, Volkswagen, has more important things to do.

If you haven’t been following the Scout saga, we’re coming up on five years of talking about the trucks without ever driving the trucks. I don’t even want to type out all the back-and-forth in paragraph form, so I’m just going to make a brief bullet-pointed list I can copy and paste into the future articles surely coming on this topic:

• May 2022: Volkswagen announces it’s bringing back Scout as an EV truck brand.
• October 2024: Volkswagen finally shows two vehicles, the Terra (a truck) and the Traveler (an SUV). They look incredible, honestly, and Scout confirms that they’ll offer both a BEV and a hybrid EREV. The company also says it will use a direct sales model.
• January 2025: Scout’s CEO admits that more people were pre-ordering the EREV option than the pure-BEV model.
• February 2025: It starts to dawn on people that these trucks wouldn’t be available until 2027 at the earliest (probably 2028), which they announced, but does bring up the question of how to maintain momentum.
• October 2025: VW, the parent company, is running short on cash, so the pure BEV-model is reportedly going to be delayed.
• November 2025: With tariffs in full swing, other VW Group companies start to wonder when they’re going to get a Scout, and if they can use the new Scout production facility. At the top of this list? Audi, which wants a Defender-fighter.
• January 2026: This has been an issue from the start, but the lawsuits start ramping up as car dealers get super mad that VW is finally building a product they think they can sell and… not allowing them to sell it.
• April 2026: VW CEO Oliver Blume tells Manager Magazin that the company is open to partnering on the Scout platform.

A lot of other things happened, so just take that as a quick gloss to catch you up with today’s news. As has been widely reported, VW of America is getting a new boss in the form of current Audi sales head Marco Schubert. An article about those changes from Automotive News contains this little tidbit about rumors of a pure combustion version:

A combustion engine version would potentially delay the Scout program further and raise questions about the economics of a vehicle program designed for a market undergoing a rapid powertrain transition.

Scout’s first models are currently expected to enter production at its new factory in Blythewood, South Carolina. The range-extender SUV is targeted for 2028, while the pickup could follow around 2030.

VW Group is investing roughly €3 billion in the plant. Using the facility for Audi vehicles as well could improve utilization and strengthen the business case for the investment.

Large Audi SUVs such as the Q7 and Q9 could potentially be built there, alongside Porsche derivatives including the Cayenne and a larger SUV expected to follow.

[Ed Note: Only one word comes to mind when I hear about the possibility of an ICE vehicle being built on the Scout’s platform: compromise. -DT]. 

When Scout was first considered, people were going insane for electric cars in theory, and automakers were rushing to get them to market. The reality has changed, so it does raise the question of whether or not the Scout brand makes sense at all. Will Americans embrace EREVs? Obviously, many of us here think it could be a good idea, but no one really knows.

Audi and Porsche are stuck because they don’t build any vehicles in the United States yet, at the same time, desperately need to be profitable in the US while somehow sidestepping tariffs. It’s a shitshow, and VW’s new Scout facility in South Carolina just makes sense. Also, almost no traditional OEM is making great margins on electric cars, whereas plenty of traditional OEMs are cashing them checks with large SUVs and trucks.

At this rate, what’s even the argument for making an all-electric truck? Lucid founder Peter Rawlinson, an expert in these things, has said it’s basically impossible to make a good, affordable, and profitable large EV truck given current technological constraints.

Having learned the hard lesson of constantly delaying a product in order to stick to a powertrain and concept with the ID.Buzz, perhaps VW can learn another lesson and just delay the BEV forever. Holistically, it’s better for the company as a whole for it to start building big Audi and Porsche SUVs in South Carolina than it probably is to make a pure-BEV Scout that’ll almost certainly lose money.

So, this is my bet. Maybe I’m wrong, but I think we’ll see a fully gas-powered Scout or Scout derivative on the market in significant numbers before we see a fully-BEV version.

Nissan Is Speeding Up The Rogue Hybrid Rollout

It’s rare that a company gets a car to market faster (see above), which makes Nissan’s move to rush the 2027 Nissan Rogue ePower hybrid all the more surprising. The company has been in a rough spot lately and lacks the resources of, say, a Toyota to make such a quick change.

At the same time, the Rogue is by far the most important product to Nissan and a hybrid option is sorely needed. How is it pulling this off? Again, from Automotive News:

The 2027 Rogue Hybrid, which Nissan initially will import from Japan, won’t transform the nameplate overnight. Each of the brand’s 1,050 U.S. dealerships will receive one or two in November. Supply is expected to increase to about 6,000 units by March as the hybrid lineup expands with two additional trims.

“If Nissan keeps the supply scarce, and the demand is strong, we’ll make money on them,” said Scott Smith, chairman of the Nissan National Dealer Advisory Board.

Localization of production will drive higher volumes and improved profitability. Assembly of the next-generation gasoline Rogue is scheduled to begin at Nissan’s plant in Smyrna, Tenn., in summer 2027. Domestic production of the hybrid is planned by early 2028 and could expand the plant to three shifts, from two today. Nissan also is evaluating whether to produce e-Power hybrid components at its engine plant in nearby Decherd, Tenn.

That explains it. These early hybrids are imported and, probably, not going to be as profitable as the locally-built versions. With Nissan losing market share to hybrids from most other competitive automakers (CR-V and RAV4, especially), maybe better to have something than nothing.

Nissan And Honda Will Develop A Software-Defined Vehicle Platform Together

Nissan and Honda nearly merged in 2024 before the whole thing blew up, though I’m feeling a little more hopeful about Nissan’s prospects with its new CEO (the old CEO is pictured above). Something was bound to come out of the companies buddying up and, now, we know what it is.

From a Nissan press release:

Nissan Motor Co., Ltd. and Honda Motor Co., Ltd. have entered into a joint development agreement to standardize multiple electronic control units (ECUs)* that form the core of next-generation software-defined vehicles (SDVs), along with the in-vehicle operating system and key parts of the middleware, and vehicle control software that run on these ECUs.

The E/E architecture incorporating the jointly developed ECUs and software is planned for application in both companies’ next-generation SDVs from fiscal year 2029 onward.

As part of their strategic partnership, Nissan and Honda continue to explore opportunities for collaboration across a range of areas to accelerate progress toward carbon neutrality and help realize a future with zero traffic fatalities involving their vehicles. In particular, the software domain centered on SDVs, which is key to vehicle intelligence and electrification, has been identified as an important area of collaboration, given the rapid pace of technological innovation and the need to strengthen competitiveness through improved R&D speed and investment efficiency.

Recognizing the need to strengthen competitiveness through faster development cycles and more efficient investment, the two companies have conducted extensive studies on potential collaboration in the software domain. As a result of these discussions, Nissan and Honda have agreed to jointly develop and standardize the core ECUs and software that underpin next-generation SDVs.

Cool. Or just merge, already.

Well, That’s One Way To Lower Fuel Prices

A new gas station network promoted by the Trump White House seemingly popped up out of nowhere, offering lower fuel prices than competitors. Gas prices have been a bit of a sore point for the Trump administration given that it spent a lot of time blaming the previous tenants for higher gas prices, only to have the exact same thing happen. Obviously, a seemingly never-ending conflict with Iran doesn’t help.

What no one could really answer is how the gas stations were offering cheaper prices. According to this report from The New York Times, there’s maybe a hint in a new lawsuit:

The lawsuit was filed by the Georgia-based Mansfield Energy against KRSM, a company based in New Jersey, and its president, Syed Kazmi. From May 21 to July 7, KRSM picked up 1.1 million gallons of fuel worth nearly $4 million from a fuel supply terminal in Pennsylvania, the suit claims.

Then, KRSM sold that fuel to gas stations that were part of the Freedom Fuel Network, which was able to sell gas at lower prices than its competitors did, the lawsuit claims.

“KRSM was able to sell such fuel for such low prices and garner such publicity because it never paid plaintiff for such fuel,” the lawsuit says.

For its part, KRSM says this is all just confusion, but has, according to the lawsuit, continued to not pay for the fuel it sold. If that ain’t a metaphor for life in 2026 I don’t know what is.

What I’m Listening To While Writing TMD

Andrew WK–yes, that bloody nose party hard guy–has quietly come out with an instrumental jazz record called Temptation To Exist. I am pleased to inform you that it’s very good. Here’s “Manhattan Beach,” one of the standouts from the album.

Tech Update

Remember when we relaunched our video player and it was kind of a disaster? Sorry about that. We’re going to try again today. Please let us know if something goes funky.

The Big Question

Place your wager, what comes first: Full BEV Scout or no-BEV Scout?

Top photo: Scout