Volkswagen takes aim at Tesla with gigafactories

Volkswagen plans to build half a dozen battery mobile plants in Europe and expand infrastructure for charging electric vehicles globally, accelerating efforts to overtake Tesla and accelerate mass adoption of corded automobiles. The world’s No. 2 carmaker, which is in the midst of a major shift towards battery-powered automobiles, said on Monday it wants to possess six battery mobile factories working in Europe by 2030, which it will construct alone or with partners. “Our transformation will be fast, it will be unprecedented,” Chief Executive Herbert Diess told Volkswagen’s Power Day, which also featured the CEOs of both BP, Enel and Iberdrola in an effort to match some of the buzz of Tesla’s Battery Day last September. “E-mobility has become core business for us,” he further added. Volkswagen, whose shares rose as much as 3.8%, didn’t expressly say how much the plan will cost. It stated in December that it planned to invest 35 billion euros ($41.7 billion) on e-mobility as a complete by 2025. The group was a laggard on electrification until it confessed in 2015 to cheating U.S. gas emissions tests and needed to take care of new Chinese quotas for electrical vehicles. It has among the toughest programs in the industry. Volkswagen reported the European factories will have a joint production capacity of around 240 gigawatt hours (GWh) annually, including the first 40 GWh would come in Sweden’s Northvolt, with production beginning in 2023. As part of the deal, Volkswagen will raise its 20% stake in Northvolt and take over the Swedish firm’s stake in a planned battery mobile venture in the German city of Salzgitter, which can form the next mill from 2025. This will be accompanied by a mill in Spain, France or Portugal at 2026 and a website at Poland, Slovakia or the Czech Republic by 2027. Two more plants will soon be set up by 2030. While the first two factories have been already represented in Volkswagen’s financial preparation, the group is presently in”deep discussions” concerning the way the following plants fitted with financial goals, board member Thomas Schmall explained. CHARGED UP Volkswagen is also working on a major expansion of charging infrastructure, a lack of which is still regarded as a big barrier to the mass adoption of battery-powered automobiles. Via present partnerships and efforts with oil major BP in addition to top European utilities Enel and Iberdrola, Volkswagen intends to run about 18,000 public fast-charging points in Europe by 2025. This represents a five-fold expansion of the existing fast-charging system, Volkswagen said, adding it might spend 400 million euros in the initiative. Back in North America, Volkswagen aims 3,500 fast-charging points by the end of 2021 via its Electrify America unit, even though in China, the world’s largest auto market, the group objectives for 17,000 by 2025. In China, in which Volkswagen annually acquired 26.5percent of battery manufacturer Guoxuan High-tech Co Ltd, the carmaker currently intends to sell more than 2 million electric vehicles a year at the close of the decade. Shifting to layout, Volkswagen unveiled plans to have a new unified prismatic battery mobile in 2023, which will encourage price cuts generated by the higher degree of in-house mobile production and could affect its current providers. Electric vehicle makers, including Tesla, are employing high powered battery cells, which resemble flashlight batteries and are relatively inexpensive and simple to manufacture. Prismatic cells, which resemble a thin hardcover book, are placed in a rectangular metal case and are more costly. Pouch cells, yet another option, are thinner and lighter, and resemble a more flexible metal mailing . “On average, we will drive down the cost of battery systems to significantly below 100 euros ($119) per kilowatt hour,” Schmall explained. “This will finally make e-mobility affordable and the dominant drive technology.” The cost of battery cells utilized for electrical vehicles has fallen to an average of 110 per kilowatt hour, Benchmark Mineral Intelligence stated in December.

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