Volkswagen to invest €22.8 billion in the future viability of its plants throughout the world
- About €14 billion to be invested in German plants
- Main focus of the next five years on e-mobility and modularization
- Diess: “investments will significantly boost the brand’s largest product and technology offensive”
The Volkswagen brand is consistently implementing its Transform 2025+ strategy. The main focus is on the further development of modular production, the continuation of the model offensive and further orientation towards e-mobility. For this purpose, the core brand of the Volkswagen Group will be investing about €22.8 billion throughout the world from 2018 to 2022.
Dr. Herbert Diess, CEO of the Volkswagen brand, emphasizes: “The investment package which has now been adopted will give a decisive boost to the largest product and technology offensive in the history of the brand. It is our objective to position Volkswagen sustainably in the lead in the volume segments and to take up a leading position in e-mobility.”
The main focus will be on Germany, which will account for investments totaling €14 billion. One of the key measures will be the transformation of the Zwickau plant into a pure e-mobility facility, with an investment volume of about €1 billion. In the first stage, Volkswagen will be concentrating the series production of its future electric vehicles based on the new modular electric drive kit (MEB) here. In 2020, the Volkswagen I.D., the first vehicle in the new generation of electric automobiles will be launched on the market.
With the MEB, Volkswagen has a technology consistently oriented towards the zero-emission mobility of the future. The MEB will allow Volkswagen to offer electric vehicles with operating ranges from 400 to 600 kilometers, rapid charging capabilities and major package benefits at the price of a comparable diesel car. In addition, the MEB will be the key tool for meeting demanding fleet targets first in Europe and China and later in the USA. All in all, the new modular electric drive kit will allow Volkswagen to offer vehicles ranging from the compact A segment to 7-seaters in the B segment. In technical terms, the new generation of Volkswagen electric vehicles will feature innovations previously only available on cars in the premium segment.
The new vehicle generation will be launched at almost the same time in Europe, China and the USA. In 2020, the production volume on the launch of the Volkswagen I.D. will be about 100,000 vehicles. At least 1 million Volkswagen electric cars are planned for 2025.
Production of the Volkswagen Golf and Passat in Zwickau is to be relocated to Wolfsburg and Emden in the future. Volkswagen is investing €2.9 billion in Wolfsburg in order to pool production of the next-generation Golf at the plant, among other items. At Emden, the total investment with a view to concentrating production of the Passat family at the plant from the end of 2018 will be about €1.1 billion.
In addition, vehicle production plants throughout the world such as those at Pamplona in Spain, Palmela in Portugal and Bratislava in Slovakia are preparing for the production of further MQB vehicles. Ground-breaking, market-oriented SUV projects are planned for plants in Mexico, the USA, South America and Russia.
As regards the future of the German Components plants, Volkswagen is investing more than €750 million in Brunswick, about €1.5 billion in Kassel and more than €800 million in Emden.