Scout Motors Aims To Help Volkswagen Do What It's Never Done: Conquer America
Company executives tell InsideEVs about the Scout SUV platform, plans for batteries and dealerships, and the "electric slowdown."
The forest site in Blythewood, South Carolina currently being cleared to make room for Scout Motors’ future electric truck and SUV factory is a very big deal on multiple fronts.
It’s the largest development the region has ever seen, estimated to bring some 4,000 jobs to produce 200,000 vehicles annually all for a projected $4.2 billion economic impact. It’s another feather in South Carolina’s manufacturing cap, following Volvo and BMW and turning the state into a burgeoning carmaking powerhouse.
And for Scout Motors’ parent company, the Volkswagen Group, it’s nothing short of a coup d'état; not just the revival of an iconic American brand, but a ground-up effort to make vehicles designed and engineered for Americans.
None of this gravity is lost on Scott Keogh, the fast-talking New York native picked to lead the effort. The last time I saw Keogh, he was the Volkswagen Group’s American CEO, and he was showing me the then-new ID.4—another car crucial to both VW’s electric goals and expansion in the U.S. market.
But as important as the ID.4 is, it’s almost a drop in the bucket compared to the impact Scout Motors hopes to make when the trucks enter production in late 2026.
“At the end of the day, ID.4 was a product, a product we loved,” Keogh told me at the factory groundbreaking last week. “Here, we’re starting from a completely blank slate.”
