Scouting Party: Revived Scout Brand Launches Website, Teases Front End

As a follow-up to our news on the same earlier this summer, Volkswagen has its sights on reviving the Scout brand name as its moniker for off-road EVs. Today we get a kinda-sorta look at the first model’s front end, along with a few other tidbits from their freshly launched website.

With plans to produce an all-electric truck and SUV by 2026, VW is showing a shadowy teaser of what’s planned to be the front end of those two vehicles. Well, technically speaking, VW says this front end is of the SUV – but you can bet your bottom winch strap that Scout will take a page from the Hummer playbook and cut both their truck and SUV from the same cloth … at least ahead of the B-pillar. At this point, we can confidently tell you it will have a windshield and side mirrors. And sheet metal styled with a t-square.

Scout will have name recognition going for it at launch, not unlike what General Motors is doing with the Hummer name. Twisting an established title with amble good juju is definitely a way to sidestep many of the hurdles facing shiny new car brands. Witness the rise and fall of Scion. Or even Saturn, for that matter.

Oh, by the way, don't forget to check out the Scout forum run by our parent company,

They’ll also benefit from a deep well of Volkswagen Group talent from which to draw. According to LinkedIn, Scout’s current VP of Growth, Cody Thacker, has been on the job since September after spending a couple of years at Porsche and nearly a decade at Audi. For the latter, he was Director at a corner of the company which focused on electric vehicle strategy and EV ecosystem development in the US market for Audi of America. With that type of firepower at its disposal, chances are nil that Scout products will be half-baked compliance cars with few horses and a pitiful driving range.

With the industry moving at a rapid pace towards electrification, this author probably shouldn’t be surprised at the sheer volume of off-road EVs purported to be in the pipeline. Hummer is throwing down a gauntlet with its 9,000-pound pickup truck, Jeep has been playing with electrons in the Magneto concept and plans to soon launch the Recon EV, while the specter of an all-electric G Wagen called the EQG looms large.

Currently (pun intended), there are about 20 jobs listed on the Scout website, ranging from Infotainment Engineer to VP of Energy Systems and just about everything in between. Scout Motors, technically an independent company, plans to unveil its first prototypes in 2023 and begin production in 2026.

[Image: Scout]

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