Looking to chip away at Tesla’s market share and their move into affordable electric cars, the Volkswagen group is moving forward with its electric offensive and has started converting the combustion engine plant at Zwickau, Germany – where the Golf and Golf estate are currently produced, to an e-mobility plant which will see up to 330,000 electric models roll off the production line per year; gradually creating the production capacity needed for building more than 1 million electric cars yearly throughout the world by 2025.
At a transformation cost of €1.2 billion, Volkwagen Group’s largest and highest-performance electric car plant will begin production of the ID. – the brands first electric model based on the new modular electric toolkit (MEB) at the end of 2019, increasing production with six planned electric models across three of the Groups brands from 2021 onwards.
“We intend to take e-mobility out of its niche and to make the electric car affordable for millions of people. Efficient, modern production facilities will be the key; With our electric cars we want to make a substantial contribution to climate protection. Electric cars will be both built and used sustainably.” – Thomas Ulbrich, Volkswagen Brand Board Member responsible for E-Mobility.
With power supplies at the Zwickau plant already changed over to 100 percent eco-power in 2017, Volkswagen intends to deliver to customers for the first time with the ID., a vehicle produced with an entirely neutral CO2 balance over the entire delivery and production chain. The CO2 avoidance measures in the production of the ID. also include the energy-intensive production of battery cells. It has been agreed that suppliers will use “green” power from renewable sources for the production of the cells.
By the start of production of the ID., the remaining emissions from the compact cogeneration plant at the facility and the entire supply chain will be compensated for by climate protection projects certified to officially approved standards.
All the electric cars to be built at Zwickau in the future will be based on the modular electric toolkit (MEB) which was developed especially for full-electric cars and makes full use of the possibilities of e-mobility. MEB vehicles offer longer ranges, more space and a variety of new digital services.
