Volkswagen’s US brand Scout was designed from the start to pursue a potential stock market listing or to allow strategic investors to take a stake, its CEO Scott Keogh ‌told ⁠daily ⁠Handelsblatt, as it explores new funding options.

Scout was deliberately set up as a stand-alone entity, Keogh said. Outside capital was “an option that is on the table”, Keogh said in the interview with the ⁠German business ‌newspaper

Keogh pointed to US investment funds focused on what ⁠he called the country’s “industrial renaissance”, without naming specific investors.

Volkswagen wants to use Scout to increase its small US market share, but internal doubts have grown over launching a new electric unit at a time of weakening ‌demand, Handelsblatt said.

Keogh said that the bet on robust trucks and SUVs with so-called range ⁠extenders had paid off, adding that 87 per cent of more than 170,000 pre-orders were for that drive type, according to the paper.

Production of a new Audi model on Scout’s flexible platform was also possible, Keogh told the paper

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