VW本社は"クルマの街"、巨大テーマパークだった —【ドイツ現地レポート・前編】

I walked around the "Autostadt" (City of Cars) at VW's headquarters in Wolfsburg, Germany. VW, Audi, Skoda—each brand has its own dedicated pavilion, making it a truly massive theme park. It's not just a museum or showroom. You can even pick up a brand-new car directly from the factory via a glass tower. It's so vast you can't see everything in one day. Part one will take you through the current lineup in each brand's pavilion. Part two will explore the historic car exhibition hall on the grounds—a tour of classic and rare cars from yesteryear. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Key Points ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ▶ The sheer scale of this massive facility with dedicated pavilions for each brand: VW, Audi, and Skoda ▶ GTI 50th Anniversary—110 horsepower in 1981 → 265 horsepower in 2026. Even so, I no longer feel excited. ▶ 22kW AC chargers and ELLI V2H commonly found in the city—a completely different world from Japan's 4-6kW ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 📋 Chapter ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 0:00 Saturday morning, heading to the city of VW headquarters 3:00 Arriving in Wolfsburg—VW's company town 5:30 Entering Autostadt, amazed by the 22kW chargers 7:30 Glass Tower CarTower—New cars descending directly from the factory 12:30 VW Pavilion—CO2 Class G and European guilt 13:45 GTI 50th Anniversary—110 horsepower in 1981 and 265 horsepower in 2026 15:20 "1300 horsepower Chinese EVs," yet I'm not excited by 260 horsepower 16:00 ELLI and V2H—The concept of making cars the world's batteries 19:00 Accessory Shop—Who will wear GTI socks? 21:50 Famous Currywurst, longer than an iPhone 24:30 Gates A & B—Where to pick up new cars directly from the factory 27:00 VW R Pavilion—GTI 50th Anniversary (1987 model) 30:00 R Lounge—The world of the 333 horsepower Golf R 32:30 Audi Pavilion—A6 e-tron, e-tron GT, RS 37:30 Smart Flower Solar, attached to the Ritz-Carlton 38:40 Skoda Pavilion—A history beginning with a bicycle in 1895 43:00 Motorsport Clubhouse—Dakar, Le Mans, Formula E 47:30 Bugatti Lancia XL1 — To be continued in Part 2 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🔗 Related Episodes ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ▶ [Warning] Even with solid-state batteries, Japan cannot win — the real axis of competition is not there    • 【警鐘】全固体電池があっても、日本は勝てないー本当の競争軸はそこじゃない   ▶ I rented an EV in Germany and drove 350km on the Autobahn. Being overtaken at 160 km/h, charging at 230 kW—a completely different world from Japan    • ドイツでEVレンタカー借りてアウトバーンを350km走った。160km/hで抜かれる...   ▶ [European Micro EV Frontline] Why Can't Japan Create a "Pragmatic Aesthetic"?    • 【欧州マイクロEV最前線】なぜ日本は“割り切りの美学”を作れないのか？全部入りじゃな...   ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🎙 Andy Kondo — Innovation Analyst ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Over 10 years of continuous observation of major global exhibitions such as CES, Hannover Messe, and IAA Mobility. He speaks in his own words about what technological change brings to industry. He questions conventional wisdom, discusses the structure, and predicts the future. 📩 Email Newsletter "Andy's Weekly — A Letter Unraveling the Future" Opened by 2,400 people every week, with an open rate of over 50% Register: [Email Newsletter Registration URL] 🌐 Web: https://andykondo.jp 🐦 X: https://x.com/andykondo_jp 💼 LinkedIn:   / andykondo   📝 note: https://note.com/andykondo #Autostadt #Volkswagen #VW #Wolfsburg #Germany #Audi #Skoda #Cupra #GolfGTI #IDBuzz #ID3 #ID7 #etron #CarTower #ELLI #V2H #LeMans #DakarRally #FormulaE #Bugatti #Lancia #VWXL1 #Mobility #GermanyOn-the-GroundReport #Autobahn #AndyKondo #InnovationAnalyst