Friday 8 July 2022
VW kicks off work on six EV battery factories
Volkswagen (VW) has started work on six new European electric vehicle (EV) battery factories.
The first of these will be based in Salzgitter in Germany and represent the carmaker’s next step in promoting the electric revolution – following an announcement that it will invest $20 billion (£16.7bn) from now to 2030 in propelling EV manufacturing and technology.
This funding will go towards building PowerCo; a company that will be chiefly responsible for all of VW’s battery work.
PowerCo will therefore manage these new battery plants, which are expected to build enough batteries to power three million EVs and employ 20,000.
VW has stated that these new factories should see the price of its car batteries halve from what it is today.
Work on battery production will begin in Salzgitter from 2025, with the next one set to be built in Valencia and four other undisclosed European locations.
CEO Herbert Diess said: “Establishing our own cell factory is a mega-project in technical and economic terms. It shows that we are bringing the leading-edge technology of the future to Germany.”
