The beloved hatchback is falling out of favor. Volkswagen is moving Golf production to Mexico as demand for the current gas-powered model sinks. The upcoming EV version will replace it in Germany alongside a new electric SUV.

Volkswagen Golf demand sinks ahead of EV version

“The Golf must go to Mexico!” Volkswagen’s works council chairman, Daniela Cavallo, warned this week. According to a statement posted on VW’s intranet, viewed by Reuters, Cavalla said, “The trend is unstoppable.”

Golf production has drastically fallen off over the past few years. A graph from the works council showed Volkswagen built just over 300,000 Golf models last year, a significant difference from over a million in 2025. This year, the company plans to build just 250,000 units.

Volkswagen is undergoing a major restructuring at its Wolfsburg plant in Germany, where the majority of Golf production is based. However, that will soon change.

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Production of the current gas-powered Golf will be relocated to Mexico from 2027, while the EV version will replace it in Wolfsburg, alongside an electric successor to the T-Roc SUV

During the transition, the plant could shift to a four-day work week. “From 2027 onwards, a temporary four-day week is not an unreasonable scenario,” Cavallo told plant workers on Wednesday.

Volkswagen’s HR head, Gunnar Kilian, added that the company plans to cut 35,000 jobs in Germany by the end of the decade. Over 20,000 have agreed to end their contracts early.

Following the production version of the ID.EVERY1, Volkswagen’s entry-level EV, the electric Golf, will be the company’s second electric vehicle based on Rivian’s electrical architecture and software stack.

Volkswagen’s tech boss, Kai Grunitz, confirmed earlier this year that “The ID 1 will be the very first vehicle with that architecture and will be the frontrunner on our side for the ID Golf.”

According to Autocar, the electric Golf will also be one of the first vehicles built on VW’s new SSP platform. The 800V architecture promises to significantly improve charging times and efficiency.

Volkswagen is expected to launch the EV variant, the “ID Golf,” in 2028. It will be built at VW’s Wolfsburg plant alongside the electric T-Roc successor.

Electric truck startup Bollinger Motors seemed to be circling the drain last week, but a fresh investment from Mullen Automotive and a new/old face at the helm means there might be life in the medium-duty EV brand, yet. Here’s what we know, so far.

Last week, we wrote about a multimillion dollar lawsuit filed by Robert Bollinger that had thrown his eponymous Bollinger Motors brand into receivership, figuring that would be it for the startup electric truck brand. But Bollinger CEO, Bryan Chambers, spoke up to say that it wasn’t over, yet. “Receivership does not necessarily mean a company is headed toward liquidation,” he explained. “In fact, receivership is often used to avoid liquidation and can be the best course of action to help a company move forward … we continue to sell and service our trucks and support our dealers and customers.”

Chambers appears to have been proven right, and Bollinger Motors will, in fact, be moving forward as a very nearly-wholly-owned subsidiary of Mullen Automotive, with Mullen CEO David Michery taking on the role of CEO at both companies.

“This is an important moment for both Mullen Automotive and Bollinger Motors,” said Michery, who confirmed the change in leadership to our friends at Clean Trucking. “Our investment in acquiring the vast majority of remaining shares and resolving certain significant outstanding debt demonstrates our belief in and continued commitment to Bollinger’s vehicle lineup and future.”

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And, if all this sounds familiar — that just means you’ve been paying attention. Mullen purchased a controlling interest in Bollinger Motors for $148.2 million in cash and stock back in September of 2022, with promises to revive the tough-looking B1 and B2 concept trucks.

Bollinger B1 electric SUV

READ MORE: Mullen claims majority stake in Bollinger Motors, will revive B1 and B2.

The fresh investment settles the debt with Robert Bollinger and means that Mullen has formally acquired an additional 21% of Bollinger Motors, Inc., bringing its total ownership to 95%. Mullen claims the deal increases shareholder equity by approximately $3.5 million, though it’s worth noting that the company enacted a reverse stock split that took effect 02JUN2025, in order to remain in compliance with the $1.00 minimum bid price requirement on NASDAQ.

Mullen also recently acquired the Fullerton, California battery production facility and “capabilities” of bankrupt electric semi truck brand, Nikola, in a move the company says is focused on increasing US manufacturing capabilities in response to demand for American-made battery components and systems.

The priority at Bollinger Motors, for now, is to regain momentum for the Bollinger B4 Chassis Cab. The B4 is a Class 4 commercial truck designed from the ground up with extensive fleet and upfitter input that ships with a 158 kWh battery pack good for 185 miles of range, with 46-foot turning radius and an impressive payload capacity of 7,325 lbs. rounding out the spec sheet.

SOURCE | IMAGES: Mullen Automotive.

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The SONDORS electric bicycle company infamously went bankrupt in 2023, yet it now appears to be attempting a rise from the ashes. The company’s founder and former CEO Storm SONDORS is back at the helm and pre-selling a new electric motorbike with a somewhat familiar name – the Meta AT.

But will riders be once bitten, twice shy?

SONDORS originally burst onto the scene way back in 2015 – the early days of the US e-bike scene – by offering a $500 fat tire electric bike via a crowdfunding campaign. Many called it a scam after the company was late to deliver, and the bikes that did eventually arrive didn’t quite live up to some of the loftiest claims, but the company did ultimately deliver. In the nearly decade afterward, SONDORS continued following that same game plan: promising the moon for an unbelievably low price, then delivering something that was almost what they’d claimed and almost on time. But they always delivered.

At least, until they didn’t.

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After finding success in the electric bicycle market, SONDORS ratcheted things up in 2021 with a groundbreaking design for a light electric motorcycle known as the Metacycle. But that’s where the wheels started to fall off the proverbial e-bike.

The project significantly overran its timeline and ultimately delivered just shy of 2,000 bikes that didn’t quite live up to their originally promised specs. Over several months, the deliveries began slowing to a trickle and ultimately ceased. More on that in a moment. For now though, the important thing to note is that was one of the key pieces that led to the company’s undoing (though some would say an expansion of SONDORS’ electric bicycles into big box stores forced tighter profit margins and didn’t help things either). Ultimately, SONDORS eventually overran its cash supply and failed to make payments to suppliers, prompting the company’s bankruptcy and entering into receivership.

That brings us to today, with Storm Sondors now telling Electrek that he has managed to buy the company back out of receivership and, with it, has launched the new Meta AT. Unlike the street-ready Metacycle, the new Meta AT is an off-road electric motorbike intended to compete with Sur Ron, Talaria, and other light electric dirt bikes.

The 4 kW peak-rated motor claims a top speed of up to 50 mph (80 km/h) and a range of up to 60 miles (96 km) from the bike’s 2.5 kWh lithium battery. Long travel front and rear suspension combined with extra knobby tires position the Meta AT for trail riding and general off-road shenanigans, which are familiar territory for Sur Ron riders.

While the bike is not street-legal, SONDORS will offer a “Street Legal Kit” including mirrors, lighting, and other components. It is unclear how far this will go toward true road-legal compliance. The company walks that tightrope by recommending that riders should “check with your local registration laws and authorities, as regulations vary by location.”

And with its claimed MSRP of $4,200 marked down to just $2,299 for those brave customers prepared to pay in full months ahead of production or delivery, SONDORS appears to be sticking to its low-cost pre-order playbook of “pay now and trust us that you’ll ride later.” Again, that always worked in the past, at least until it didn’t.

To some, the new bike and the offer it presents sounds dubious, at best. As SONDORS’ marketing emails went out, more than a few forwarded emails landed in my inbox from people expressing a range of emotions from confusion to shock to downright anger. With at least 500 paying customers having been left without Metacycles (plus an unknown number of SONDORS electric bicycle customers left out to dry), a SONDORS revival was bound to raise a few eyebrows… or furrow them.

And so to try and learn more about what happened since the big breakdown, and what could happen next with this supposed new Meta incarnate, I went straight to the source. I reached out to Storm Sondors, and wouldn’t you know it, he actually answered.

As I peppered him with questions, to his credit, he was quite forthcoming. He genuinely seems to express remorse for what happened at the end of SONDORS original run and explained that he has been “working relentlessly to find a resolution for those remaining backers.” The sentiment is nice, but it doesn’t make anyone whole again and there doesn’t yet appear to be any solid recourse in the works.

As for what went wrong at the end, Storm shared with me what he says is a list of payments totaling over US $11 million to the Chinese factory that produced the Metacycle. This helps corroborate much of the backstory that led to an expose I wrote in 2023 after I finally found an inside source at the factory, further illuminating a major disagreement between SONDORS and the factory it contracted to build its Metacycles.

As the factory told me back then, after several rounds of Metacycle production, Storm placed a large deposit for another major production round, which the factory used to buy thousands of components to build the bikes and prepare a new production line. But when financial problems hit SONDORS, he failed to pay the balance on existing production runs, which left hundreds of finished Metacycles gathering dust in the factory’s warehouse in China.

Storm showed me a spreadsheet of payments he made to the factory and explained that he asked the factory to shift his deposit for future production towards paying off the balance on existing production, which would have allowed him to take receipt of hundreds of completed Metacycles. The factory says they resisted as the money had already been spent on components, additional staff, and tooling up a new production line, all to help accommodate SONDORS’ major new production order. Shifting the payment would have been a breach of contract, the factory claimed, and would have left them out millions of dollars without a guarantee that future production they have already begun investing in would ever be paid for.

The two parties have been at loggerheads ever since, and Storm shared that he has attempted to rope in QS Motors, a major Chinese manufacturer and the parent company of the factory that produced the Metacycle, into “stepping in to resolve this matter urgently for the benefit of SONDORS Metacycle customers.”

At this point, it doesn’t appear that either party has budged. Storm continues to say “I paid!” while holding up over US $2 million in deposit receipts, and the factory continues to say “Yes, but not for these bikes, you didn’t.”

That leaves the old SONDORS in a stalemate, with no resolution in sight. But that hasn’t stopped the newly reborn SONDORS from pushing forward with its Meta AT launch. “The Meta AT is a different machine entirely,” Storm explained. “Smaller, lighter, and built to be more agile. It leans toward the off-road category with a price and performance level that opens it up to a much wider audience. Yes, it’s intentionally closer to the Sur Ron segment, but with SONDORS styling and ride experience.”

With a lower performance, less complicated, and even less legal motorbike than the original Metacycle, the barrier for production will certainly be lower this time, but will that be enough to win over skeptical riders?

Storm thinks so, and claims to have received over 7,400 Meta AT reservations “through private channels, with early access offered to those individuals.” The bikes are now available to the public for pre-order through an Indiegogo campaign, which currently shows 36 backers. Storm says reservations are “converting in stages. As they do, you’ll see the numbers reflected on the campaign page.”

I asked Storm if he was worried about riders trusting SONDORS after the company’s abrupt closure in 2023. For him, there wasn’t any question. “I created this category. Before SONDORS, there was no mass market for electric bikes – now there is. I’ve shipped hundreds of thousands of units. I’ve built the factories, the tooling, the supply chains. This isn’t a side hustle or a new idea. This is what I do. And the Meta AT is the best machine I’ve ever built. You can question the industry. You can question the hype. But don’t question whether I deliver. I always have.”

And he’s right. SONDORS did always deliver. Until it didn’t.