MQB - Volkswagen's Latest Innovation Is No Hack
Ulrich Hackenberg, an automobile engineer at Volkswagen, has quite possibly designed the greatest innovation in automobile industry : A "global car" with "the same basic design that can be built, in subtle variations, and sold in different markets." Volkswagen's work on its largest mega-platform, known internally as MQB, began in earnest in 2007 and is being implemented over the next six years at a cost of nearly $70 billion, estimates Morgan Stanley. What is MQB? It's the largest mega platform, "a fundamental rethink of vehicle platforms, the industrial Lego from which cars are designed and made." " VW has just begun to implement its sophisticated and highly flexible platform with the deceptively simple label MQB, a German acronym for "modular transverse matrix." Virtually all of the group's small and medium front-wheel-drive family models, including the latest generations of the VW Golf and Audi A3, are being designed a...