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centage require review of one or two line items—with the estimate annotated as to what an appraiser needs to review—while the balance will require being handled “old school: have it towed, take the car apart and go classic blueprinting.”

Moving beyond that 40% of initial estimates “without any further line items” needing to be added will require greater access to vehicle-specific OEM build sheet data, he said.

“If we get that, we’re going to have a greater understanding of that vehicle, the DNA of that car,” Spears said. “And then we’re going to have a much better understanding of what this car really needs, its repair process. We have got to solve the problem of build sheet data, and we’re in the right room for that.”

In the interim, he said, AI estimating offers benefits to more than just insurers. Tractable has a test going with LKQ Corp., he said, using the technology in a bit of a reverse way: helping determine which parts are not damaged on salvage vehicles.

It could also help collision repairers with the customer sales process, Spears said. Currently, estimators point a potential customer to a waiting area while preparing an estimate.

“Instead, they’re going to be able to quickly take some images of the car, and then while the images are being processed, they can take the customer around the shop and show the investment that you have” in equipment, training and certifications, Spears suggested. “When they get back to the desk, here’s the estimate.”

Jimmy Spears of Tractable said his company’s AI estimating system has become adept at quickly determining from photos if a vehicle is a total loss Volkswagen closed 2021 with almost 17,000 ID.4 sales in the U.S. but the number could be four times higher, according to the company’s representative.

The company has more than 40,000 reservations but is supply constrained, as the cars are imported from Europe.

“We could have sold four times that amount,” Volkswagen Group of America CEO Scott Keogh said via Automotive News. “What VW dealers are saying is that this is the most excitement they’ve had on the shop floor since 1998, when we brought the Beetle back.”

Currently, the Volkswagen ID.4 is offered in RWD and AWD versions, with a single 82 kWh battery version.

In 2022, the car will get an upgrade, including range, while the lineup will be expanded by a new, less expensive version with a smaller battery, probably 62 kWh or so.

This new entry-level ID.4 with RWD will start at around $35,000. That would be about $5,000 less than in the case of ID.4 Pro.

The key element of Volkswagen’s expansion of the MEB-based electric cars is the Chattanooga, TN, plant, which will start production of the ID.4 later this year using battery cells from the new SK Innovation’s SK On plant in Georgia.

It will not be enough to replace 100% of the imports at the beginning, and made-in-Germany ID.4s will be sold through 2022:

“VW will continue to import ID4s into the U.S. from Europe as it ramps up local production of the BEV compact crossover in Chattanooga this year, with locally produced versions beginning to appear in dealerships in the second half of the year,” Keogh told Automotive News.

The good news for more than 4,000 employees in Chattanooga is a 10% wage increase in 2022.

The average return on sales in the Volkswagen dealer network in 2021, according to the article, was nearly 5%--three times more than in 2020. Hopefully, it will encourage to push electrification.

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