VW JOURNEY: PASSAT TO ID.4
What a short, strange trip it’s been.
When the last Passat rolled off the line at Chattanooga’s Volkswagen plant recently, it marked a remarkable yet relatively short era for the city and the carmaker.
The announcement on a hot, steamy July day in 2008 that VW would locate here began the serious re-emergence into manufacturing for the city, which was built on such industry in the late 1800s and later because of it saw the city adopt the nickname of Dynamo of Dixie.
For the carmaker, it was the prelude to the launch of a model that would win the 2012 Motor Trend Car of the Year and Europe’s “Car of the Year 2015” awards and compete with the popular, gasoline-driven, mid-sized Honda Accords, Toyota Camrys and Nissan Altimas.
And when the last car rolled off, it was to make room for the battery-powered ID.4 sport utility vehicle (SUV).
The first Chattanooga-assembled Passat emerged in 2011, and it was joined as a local product in 2017 by the large Atlas SUV. When the last platinum gray 2022 Limited Edition Passat came off the line in December, nearly 800,000 of the vehicles had been assembled here.
In the short 13 years between the location of the plant here and the last Passat, the carmaker endured a devastating emissions scandal and the plant saw two losing attempts at unionization.
In the meantime, it hired some 4,000 employees and made the commitment to become the world’s largest electric vehicle maker by 2025.
“We set ourselves a strategic target to become the global market leader in electric vehicles — and we are well on track,” VW Chief Executive Herbert Diess said last July. “Now we are setting parameters.”
Those parameters, officials said, are half its sales in electric vehicles by 2030 and the end of sales for gasoline vehicles in Europe by 2035 and somewhat later in China and the United States.
Just 15 years ago, though, Hamilton County and the city of Chattanooga were looking for a major tenant who would occupy some or all of 1,350 acres that once had been a part of the 6,000-acre former Volunteer Army Ammunitions Plant and which now had been dubbed the Enterprise South Industrial Park.
Hickory Valley Road had been opened to run through the park between Bonny Oaks Drive and Highway 58, the Tennessee Department of Transportation had constructed an interchange from the industrial park to nearby Interstate 75, and the city and county had worked together to have the area declared a “megasite” by the Tennessee Valley Authority.
In 2007, the Enterprise South site was the runner-up for a Toyota Motor Co. plant that went to Tupelo, Miss. But, finally, in 2008, the area secured the manufacturer it was looking for when Volkswagen decided to return to America to manufacture some of its cars for the first time since 1988.
“Chattanooga is an excellent fit for the Volkswagen culture, having an exceptional quality of life and a long manufacturing tradition,” Stefan Jacoby, then-president and chief executive officer of Volkswagen Group in America, said at the time.
“We started with a vision of transforming an idle Army facility into the source of thousands of family-wage jobs,” then-Hamilton County Mayor Claude Ramsey said. “Over the last 14 years, I’ve worked with four different city mayors as well as county commissioners, city councilmen and countless others in overcoming barriers and objections to that plan.”
Between that day and today’s future in electric cars that was little seen at the time, there were a few bumps along the way.
The first was the 2014 union election — following three days of political prodding on both sides — at which some 1,400 VW employees rejected representation by the United Auto Workers (UAW) in a 712-626 vote.
The second was the carmaker’s 2015 scandal in which — following a tip to the Environmental Protection Agency and the California Air Resource Board — it admitted rigging emissions tests for the diesel engines in some of the cars it manufactured from 2009 to 2015. A settlement of $14.7 billion against the company was approved in 2016.
The third was the second union vote in 2019, slightly closer, which rejected UAW representation again, 833-776.
“Our employees have spoken,” said Frank Fischer, then-president and CEO of Volkswagen Chattanooga.
Today, Chattanooga is home to the only U.S. manufacturing plant of the world’s second-largest carmaker after Toyota (and potential electric vehicle leader), has an Enterprise South nearly full of manufacturing facilities and boasts an adjoining Enterprise South Nature Park that offers 2,800 wooded acres of walking and biking trails.
All in just over 13 years. Indeed, what a short, strange trip it’s been.