volkswagen

Volkswagen’s Zwickau Factory Switches To Only EV After 116 Years!

Volkswagen’s Zwickau factory is switching 100% to electric vehicles (EV). It will produce a total of 6 models from 3 company brands (Volkswagen, Audi, and Seat).

Today was the last day it produced a fossil fuel vehicle, vehicle #6,049,207 from the factory under Volkswagen’s reign, a Golf R Estate. The factory goes back much further than Volkswagen’s start in 1990, though.

It goes back 116 years! Horch started producing cars there in 1904! VW produced almost two-thirds of the vehicles ever produced there, but other auto brands that put their fossil-fueled cars together in Zwickau included Audi, DKW, Trabant, and others.

The production capacity of the factory is supposed to grow to 330,000 vehicles a year — again, all electric. In total, 8,000 people work at the Zwickau factory.

Hall 6 of the factory needs to be reworked for production of the VW ID.3 there, and that is supposed to take several weeks, but then Volkswagen will launch into higher-volume production of what could be its first mass-market electric vehicle in Zwickau.

The Volkswagen ID.4 will also be produced in Zwickau, with start of production planned for later in the summer as well. It is an electric SUV.

The company is putting €1.2 billion into converting this factory to make 330,000 electric vehicles a year, and that conversion is supposed to be complete next year.

VW is already building/retooling production lines to have 8 factories producing EVs in 2022. These 8 factories are:

  • Germany: Zwickau, Dresden, Hanover, and Emden
  • Czech Republic: Mlada Boleslav
  • USA: Chattanooga (Tennessee)
  • China: Anting and Foshan

The electric vehicle revolution is alive and happening and VW is another serious player in the electric vehicle industry (aside from Tesla) that is aiming to produce electric vehicles at a very large scale and surely even dreams of becoming the world’s #1 electric automaker someday.

Reference- Volkswagen PR, InsideEVs, Autocar, Clean Technica, Electrek, EV Obsession