VW’s electric mega factory
We tour ID.3 plant in Germany as production starts
“There will be a big ramp-up in electric car production over the next five to 15 years” THOMAS ULBRICH VW e-mobility
EARLIER this week, German Chancellor Angela Merkel paid a visit to the Volkswagen factory in Zwickau in the country’s eastern state of Saxony. She was there to witness the beginning of series production of VW’s new Golf-sized electric car, the ID.3.
It was the culmination of years of work at the site, which has a long history of automotive production and is on course to build only electric cars – over 300,000 of them per year – by 2021. The huge effort reflects the fact that while there are concerns about the lack of charging infrastructure, equally vital is the production capacity to build enough cars to meet customer demand.
Germany has been an automotive production powerhouse for the past 100 years, and the Volkswagen Group is determined that it’ll remain so for the foreseeable future, as electric cars become the norm. As part of the Group’s pivot to ‘e-mobility’ and the development of its MEB electric car platform, new plants are being constructed, and old ones converted, at several locations around the world in preparation for producing the ID.3 and its forthcoming sister models.
To see it for ourselves, Auto Express was given a behind-the-scenes look at the plant visited by Merkel. Once a site of Trabant production in the Communist era, as well as the home of the Audi and Horch brands before that, in more recent years the 1.4 million square metre Zwickau factory has been churning out in the region of 300,000 Golf hatchbacks and estates per annum.
Transformation
But in mid-2016, the decision was taken to make this plant the ‘nucleus’ for production of cars on the MEB platform. According to Thomas Ulbrich, member of the Volkswagen board for e-mobility, the Zwickau project is “the largest and most difficult plant transformation” the company will undertake.
“There will be a big ramp-up in production over the next five to 15 years with [electric] cars,” Ulbrich told us. “Some plants will be completely transformed, one will be split 50:50 between internal combustion and electric cars, and in China we are building one completely new plant for electric cars. We want to take e-mobility out of its niche and make the electric car affordable for millions of people. Large volumes and efficient production will lay the foundation.”
Other locations in Germany that will contribute to VW’s electric-car manufacturing capacity include Emden, Hanover and Dresden. A battery factory in Brunswick will make up to half a million MEB battery packs a year. VW Group EVs will also be produced by Skoda in Mlada Boleslav in the Czech Republic; in Chattanooga, Tennessee in the US; and in the cities of Anting and Foshan in China.
The work to convert the Zwickau factory has included the construction of 12 entirely new buildings, as well as the extension of the existing metalpressing shop. Five of the buildings have already been built, with seven more nearing completion; 3,500 tonnes of steel and 12,200 cubic metres of concrete are being used. VW’s total investment in the location runs to €1.2billion, while in the region of €800million has already been spent.
There are two production lines at Zwickau, each made up of a body shop, paint shop and assembly area; the first was converted in
time for ID.3 series production to begin this month, while the second will be updated during 2020 in readiness for the factory going 100 per cent electric by 2021. The changes include upgrading the conveyor lines throughout the plant to cope with the increased weight of electric cars.
A total of 1,600 new robots have been installed as part of the revamp, and production of the outgoing Mk7 Golf continues on the second line as the first is converted, with no interruption in output. The €74million revamp of the press shop means that by 2021, almost all pressed parts required for the cars built in Zwickau will be produced on-site, in a new, fully automated process that converts steel sheet into finished parts.
Ulbrich estimates the electric car production line will be in the region of 15 to 20 per cent more efficient than the internal combustion line it’s replacing. The existing body and paint shops for Golf production are already highly automated, but the new assembly line is expected to triple automation compared with its predecessor, and up to 500 driverless carts will be used to move parts around the site. Amid talk of efficiency, however, there will not be large-scale job losses as a result of the shift to electric production.
“With the transformation of the plant, we are increasing capacity and the content of the work to cover the employment we have today, with the exception of a small reduction in head count that will be covered by retirements,” said Ulbrich.
The majority of the current near-8,000-strong workforce are being retrained to work on an electric car production line, including some 1,500 of them gaining qualifications for working with high-voltage electrical systems. By the end of August, 3,800 employees had completed training over the course of 8,000 training days, out of a total of 13,000 training days to be delivered. The training campaign is being carried out together with the Volkswagen Training Institute at
Zwickau, where a dedicated high-voltage laboratory with electric training vehicles has been established.
CO2 emissions reduction has been a key focus as VW develops its electric cars, and the brand is promising that all ID models will be “carbon-neutral at the point of handover” to the customer. Zwickau runs on renewable energy (hydroelectricity generated in and imported from Austria), and VW is working with its key suppliers to ensure that they do the same. A small amount of unavoidable CO2 emitted during the production process has been offset by supporting environmental initiatives, including rainforest renewal schemes.