Volkswagen starts pre-production of ID electric vehicles in China
In a few years, VW will have the capacity to assemble around 600,000 EVs in China.
Series production of the ID 3 all-electric hatchback kicked off a few days ago at Volkswagen's factory in Zwickau, Germany. Today, the international automotive giant announced it's starting manufacturing prototypes of a China-specific EV at its plant in Anting, near the city of Shanghai.
This facility is a joint venture between Volkswagen and SAIC. According to a statement released by the company, it took just one year to complete the factory, which was built purely to assemble electric vehicles based on VW's MEB platform. Official, series production is slated to begin in October of 2020.
Once it's fully up and running, the Anting plant is estimated to have an annual production capacity of 300,000 units. In conjunction with an FAW-Volkswagen joint-venture factory in Foshan, China, the German automaker will have the ability to assemble around 600,000 electric vehicles per year in the People's Republic.
Here, a Volkswagen ID 3 rolls down the assembly line in the automaker's Zwickau, Germany factory.
Volkswagen's new Anting factory is designed to be as efficient as the cars it produces. According to the automaker, it takes up less land area because space utilization is higher than in your typical assembly facility. Six different car lines can simultaneously be built there as well, supposedly the best of any plant in the country.
The China-specific ID model assembled today is the first of an electric-vehicle offensive from the automaker. By 2025, up to 15 different MEB-based models for a range of Volkswagen Group brands are expected to be assembled in China.
Dr. Herbert Diess, chairman of the board of management at Volkswagen AG said in a statement released by the automaker, "The Volkswagen Group projects a total volume of 22 million all-electric cars worldwide by 2028, with more than 50 percent of that from China." The populous Asian nation will play a critical roll in the automaker's plans to jettison combustion-powered vehicles. Continuing, Diess said their goal is to be carbon neutral by the year 2050.
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