In October, Volkswagen’s “Scout” brand pretty much broke the internet with its Traveler and Terra off-roaders. Not only are they gorgeous machines, but they come with some truly epic features like: a range extender (!), a bench seat, a rear-mounted spare, a solid rear axle, a column shifter, and on and on. I consider the Traveler to be, at least on paper, pretty much perfect, which is why I put in a pre-order for one. But now, four months later, I’m a little worried.
I truly believe that, right now in 2025, the American marketplace is ripe for Range Extended Electric Vehicles. Full BEVs are too expensive and the infrastructure — even here in LA — just isn’t good enough. But there are environmental regulations that push for electrification (for good reason), so there’s a bit of tension between what consumers want/can afford and what certain lawmakers want. EREVs help to solve that problem. And — as someone who drives an EREV daily — I can say: They just rule in general.
That’s why I think the Scout Traveler and Terra have potential to be massive hits; they have the powertrain, they have the style, they have the “customer delight” features — they’ve got it all, so long as they have a palatable price structure.
The problem is that production isn’t starting until 2027. This was done for a few reasons. First, debuting a vehicle before it’s ready allows an automaker to gauge customer interest and make tweaks accordingly. Second, with pre-orders now a thing in the car world, debuting a car early can drum up some cash for development.
The downside, of course, is that you’re essentially showing all of your cards to other automakers, who are absolutely paying attention to how the public responds to your vehicle’s debut, and you’re giving those automakers a chance to catch up. What’s more, just because the public is excited about your machine in 2024 doesn’t mean they’ll still be excited in 2027. The marketplace will change.
This is something I’ve heard from many friends who were all smitten by Scout when it showed off its two products in October. “They’re epic, but man … 2027. That’s a long way off.”
I keep imagining a world in which Scout had been bold enough to just show its vehicles and say “This is it. I hope you like it, because they’re on sale next week.” I’d be about $50 grand poorer, so part of me is glad the company didn’t do that, and of course I realize that such a debut couldn’t have happened last year given where Scout is in its overall company timeline (it’s still building its factory in a small town in South Carolina). But I’m just concerned about loss of momentum.
The brand has a cool website with lots of great driving footage of the new vehicles, plus some heritage imagery. Its Instagram page is being updated every now and again, and there are new press releases coming out about happenings at the company and features expected in the vehicles when they do finally hit the market:
But 2027 is a long way off, and we’ve seen this movie before: VW spent years teasing the ID.Buzz, and that only recently hit the market. I don’t think we have a strong indication of how well that vehicle is selling, but I can say that there’s no better time to put a vehicle on the market than when everyone is most excited about it. And keeping folks excited about the Scout after they’ve been waiting three years is a tall task.
The Ford Bronco showed its face in July of 2020, and the cars were at dealerships in under a year. That’s a typical timeframe between debut and sale, though sometimes delays throw that off. Then, of course, you’ve got Tesla, who showed its Cybertruck in 2019 and started selling it four years later. Clearly there are no hard-and-fast rules, though I’d contend that the Cybertruck didn’t gain from Tesla’s long gestation period, though it didn’t lose much either given that even at its debut it was unlike anything else on the road. Then again, maybe lots of folks squirreled away their money in those four years in anticipation for the truck — not something they could have done without knowing it was on the horizon.
Between the “early debut and plan to buy” and “surprise debut and buy immediately” strategies, I don’t know which one wins out when you run the numbers. My instinct says freshness and excitement win out over being able to plan for a purchase a few years down the line, but in any case, if you’re Scout Motors, the goal should be to keep momentum between now and 2027.
I reached out to the Scout team about this, and here’s what they told me:
While developing two great American-built products, we’re building our company and manufacturing facility from the ground up, so we certainly have a lot of work to accomplish over the next few years before the Scout® Traveler™ SUV and Terra™ truck are on the road.We’re excited to meet consumers where they live, work, and play and go on this journey with them. Online and in person, we want to build connections with our Scout community and reservation holders. We’re planning a mix of live events where consumers can see the new Scout vehicles, investing in our online community forum, and sharing stories about the people and processes involved in bringing back an American icon and news about the development of our vehicles.The initial response to our vehicles and brand is both incredible and encouraging. We’re ready and excited to build on that momentum.
It’ll be interesting to see what percentage of pre-orders are canceled versus actually delivered to customers.
Does anyone really get too excited about these announcements? I read it, it sounds interesting, but we’ll see what actually comes to market and when. And then I’ll let someone else buy it first and see if it is a POS. I’d do that if this were a Toyota too, it isn’t a Volkswagen thing.
I mean almost nothing delivers on the hype these days. Even video games get released as buggy half-baked messes to a group of pre-order early adopters who never seem to learn the lesson not to put money down pre-launch. For a car, it seems the minimum expectation is that it will somehow be $20k more expensive by the time it actually rolls out.