Scout Motors on trucks and SUVs: "you can't get into this segment as a poser"

As if it didn’t have enough brands under its umbrella already, the Volkswagen Group recently announced plans to enter the North American pickup truck and SUV markets with a new marque that it’s calling Scout Motors.

Scout was the name given to International Harvester’s range of vehicles in the 1960s and 70s, so why is VW now bringing it back as a separate brand?

“If you look around the group portfolio, you see some really great brands and a bunch of really great models, but none of them are doing what we're doing,” Scout Motors strategy director Ryan Decker told TG. “So, from a group perspective, all I'll say is that's white space. White space segments, white space products, white space target customers.

“Looking at it from the Scout perspective, if you're going to go and attack that white space, you have to do it with credibility. You can't get into this segment as a poser. You can’t have poser products or a poser brand. On the brand side, bang, we’ve got Scout. That’s the OG in the segment. You have people walking around here talking about how they went camping, hunting or fishing with their grandpa in the original cars. Scout has that spirit.

“We know that having a good brand matters in these segments. There’s a lot of pro-American pride in buying vehicles such as these.” 

Decker also points out the company is essentially being run as a startup but with the backing of one of the world’s largest OEMs. “If you listen very carefully you might hear one or two German accents,” he says about the team being put together in Detroit.   

That’s the brand, then, but what about the actual cars? Well, Scout unveiled its two ‘production-intent concepts’ back in October 2024 – the boxy Traveler SUV and Terra Truck.

“On the product side, I think what we’ve done is combined the best of the old world and the new world,” said Decker. 

“Old world means body-on-frame, solid rear axle, 35in tyres (maybe a little bit bigger), designed to be accessorised, real door handles (what a novel thing) and real tactile switches. But then the new world is all about architecture, cool software, responsive software, the satellite connectivity concepts we showed. We didn’t want to make a product that felt like it had got stuck in 1980.”

And while technical details are still fairly thin on the ground, we've been told both the Traveler and Terra will be built on 800V electrical architecture with 350kW rapid charging. And they’ll use the software developed through the VW Group’s joint venture with Rivian.

“We will be among the first to use that software, which is great because it’s state of the art, it’s responsive, it’s fast, you get over-the-air-updates – all the things that you need now to deliver on being a tool for today,” says Decker. “We now have access to that. So, we’re engaged, we’re working with them. That relationship is ongoing.”  

We also know the two vehicles are both targeting 350 miles of range as EVs and 500 miles when specced with the additional ‘Harvester’ range-extending petrol engine. No word on where that engine will come from yet, though.

“It’s an all-new platform that’s owned and developed by Scout. This is ours. I can’t emphasise that enough, this is not a rebadged existing product with some chunky plastic on it. It’s all new from the ground up,” said Decker when TG asked whether any other hardware might come from elsewhere in the VW Group. 

“Now, when it comes to the components for it, we look around for the best components that deliver on Scout requirements. A lot of the stuff you won’t find in any other company’s portfolio, because who’s doing a body-on-frame EV right now with a solid rear axle? Nobody is doing that. 

“For commodity parts, things like the motors that make the windows go up and down, of course we’ll look around for highly scaled, good cost components. 

“If you’re company A and you’re getting 50,000 widgets, you’re getting one price. If you’re Scout Motors with the whole backing of the Volkswagen Group behind you, I’m making up the number but say you’re buying 8,000,000 widgets. Of course that’s driving economies of scale, that’s driving material costs, that's driving pricing, that’s driving business case, that’s driving customer value. It’s a really nice advantage to have and we would be fools to not lean into it. But for things that are brand-defining and part of our brand DNA, we’re building that ourselves all day.”

When it unveiled the two concept cars, Scout said production would begin in 2027 with prices kicking off at $60,000, which could fall to $50,000 if EV incentives are in place. Decker tells TG the company is still on track to hit those targets. 

“We've got a lot to do, but we have what we believe is a realistic development time. There’s sort of two major things that are happening in parallel – there's the vehicle testing and the building of the factory.

“We’re still on track for 2027. We know it’s possible to get below $60,000. The incentives are a separate thing, but we have control over our vehicle."