Volkswagen’s Electric Vehicle Misfire: Its Made-In-Chattanooga Flagship EV Is The Slowest Selling Vehicle In The United States (Op-Ed By Buck Throckmorton)

Image Credit: VM Media

Submitted by Buck Throckmorton –

While I get some schadenfreude from documenting the financial damage that legacy American automobile manufacturers such as Ford and GM have inflicted on themselves with their EV misadventures, the mess at Volkswagen is deeply upsetting to me.

Be it right or wrong, I know that the US government will bail out Ford and GM, if necessary, to help mitigate the damage done by their irresponsible executives. Volkswagen, on the other hand, is likely to pull out of the US market and close its US manufacturing operations if it can’t right its ship.

I have long been a fan of Volkswagen products. In the post-Beetle era, its lineup has provided modern German engineering and a German driving experience to the mass market. My wife and I had a Passat which was an exceptional vehicle. I might have bought an American-made VW Atlas for my most recent vehicle purchase if I wasn’t so disgusted by Volkswagen pursuing an all-EV future. I didn’t want to buy a car that VW’s executives were determined to kill off.

If Volkswagen is going to survive in the U.S., it had better re-commit to gasoline-powered (“ICE”) vehicles, because its flagship electric offering, the ID.4, is the slowest selling car in the United States.  

“It would take 527 days to sell out the inventory of ID.4s in the United States, making it the slowest-selling vehicle in the country in January”, according to metrics from CarEdge.

Have you ever heard of the Maserati Grecale? Me neither. It may be obscure and hard to sell, but it turns over faster than Volkswagen’s electric car.

Normal vehicle inventory takes 60 – 90 days to turn, and dealerships have historically targeted a 60-day supply of vehicles to ensure the optimum mix of vehicles without carrying excess inventory. For a vehicle which moves so slow that dealers are burdened with more than a year’s supply, they’d generally prefer to have zero units in stock. On the off chance a customer came in wanting to buy such a slow-moving vehicle, the dealer could easily get another dealer to transfer one.   

Over the past several decades there has been an economic explosion in the American South, thanks in part to so many auto manufacturers locating plants in the region. In addition to those manufacturing operations, numerous suppliers also established nearby operations, and suppliers to those suppliers sprung up too. The cycle of prosperity and economic activity flows well when manufacturing is strong. Pretty much all the major Japanese, Korean, and German car companies have operations in the southern U.S. It’s a golden goose laying golden eggs.

But the EV fever somehow captured the minds of many auto executives and southern politicians, and they pursued EV investments in the South, even though the explicit goal was to kill-off the golden goose of existing ICE auto manufacturing. 

In 2019, Tennessee’s then-governor, Bill Haslam waxed enthusiastic about killing off ICE vehicles in favor of electric vehicles when he hyped VW’s announcement of a new Tennessee EV plant, “The shift toward electric vehicles is a trend that can be seen worldwide, and Volkswagen’s decision to locate its first North American EV manufacturing facility in Chattanooga underscores Tennessee’s manufacturing strength and highly-skilled workforce.”

The state of Tennessee kicked in about $50 million of taxpayer dollars toward this ill-fated EV plant that was built alongside VW’s existing Tennessee plant.

Initial expectations were for the EV plant to assemble about 7,000 units per month, with the ability to ramp up to a volume exceeding 100,000 per year. 

The actual demand has been negligible, averaging less than 20,000 units per year, even with federal rebates and aggressive pricing. But in Q4 of 2025, after the federal EV incentives expired, Volkswagen sold a nominal 248 electric ID.4s. That averages out to just 83 units per month, and annualizes to less than 1,000 units. 

Volkswagen built a taxpayer-subsidized EV plant that was expected to produce about 10,000 electric vehicles per month, but it cannot even sell 100. The company may have no choice but to scrap the glut of unsold ID.4s, since consumers have made it clear that there is virtually no price at which they’re willing to buy them. 

The failure of Volkswagen’s EV foray is an overall good thing for the American auto industry. The golden goose of ICE manufacturing lives on. But it is infuriating that politicians wasted taxpayer money on this malinvestment, and it will be especially sad if VW has to pull out of the American market and close its legacy Tennessee manufacturing plant due to the awful EV Gamble.

*****

If you’re curious as to which are the fastest and slowing selling vehicles in the U.S., here is the list:

Slowest Selling Vehicles in the U.S.

• Volkswagen ID.4: 527 day supply
• Maserati Grecale: 302 day supply
• Jaguar F-PACE: 292 days
• Alfa Romeo Giulia: 241 days
• Alfa Romeo Stelvio: 217 days

Fastest Selling Vehicles in the U.S.

• Toyota Camry: 22 days
• Toyota RAV4: 24 days
• Lexus NX: 24 days
• Lexus RX Hybrid: 25 days
• Cadillac Escalade ESV: 25 days

*Op-ed originally published on Ace of Spades HQ; reprinted here by permission of author.