electromobility
VW supervisors are waving through plans for the Trinity future model
View of the Volkswagen factory premises. For the new factory for the future central VW model Trinity in the greater Wolfsburg area, a location directly at the main plant is emerging. Photo: Swen Pförtner/dpa
© dpa-infocom GmbH
For Volkswagen and Tesla, decisions are made on what are probably the most important new plants to be built in the next few years. The Americans have the go for Grünheide. VW is also going green, but close to its headquarters.
The Volkswagen Supervisory Board has finally initiated the construction of a new plant for the future central Trinity electric model in Wolfsburg.
The group is spending a good two billion euros on the factory, and work is scheduled to start in spring 2023. As already indicated in earlier decision-making rounds, the completely redesigned production site will be built in the immediate vicinity of the headquarters: on the north side of the previous site in the Warmenau district of Wolfsburg.
“In this way we are sustainably strengthening the competitiveness of the main plant and giving the workforce strong long-term prospects,” said core brand boss Ralf Brandstätter after consultations with the control committee on Friday. Production of the Trinity is scheduled to start in 2026.
At the same time, the main plant will be opened to other electric and combustion cars and will later be fundamentally converted. With the Trinity factory located next door, Volkswagen wants to catch up with its US competitor Tesla in terms of production technology, among other things. But it should also be a model for the conversion of many of our own locations.
Also green light in Grünheide
The Americans also received approval for their own new plant in Grünheide near Berlin on Friday – only around 200 kilometers as the crow flies from the Volkswagen headquarters and around two years after the start of construction with initially only preliminary approvals. Like Tesla, VW is aiming for a production time of ten hours per car for the Trinity in its “giga factories”. The all-electric model should have the company’s own software and contain a lot of networking technology, even with systems for autonomous driving.
The Trinity is being developed on a new high-volume platform called the SSP. During its lifetime, it is intended to form the basis for a total of over 40 million vehicles from the VW Group. For works council chief Daniela Cavallo, the decision is an important stage in the reorganization of the headquarters – recently there had been heated debates at Volkswagen about underutilized capacities in the chip crisis and the late start of e-models in Wolfsburg.
Well before Trinity, the home location should get part of the production of the electric compact car ID.3 from 2023. Within Europe, this was previously manufactured in Zwickau, Saxony. “The root of our company remains the powerhouse of the group and continues to gain in importance,” said Cavallo. She recently told the German Press Agency: “We need the project above all for the transformation, i.e. to continue to provide work for the employees we now have on board.”
CO2-neutral over several stages
Lower Saxony’s Prime Minister and VW supervisor Stephan Weil (SPD) explained that the entire production of the car manufacturer in his state should become CO2-neutral in several stages. With the decision to build a second factory in Wolfsburg, the group also wants to ensure that new projects are more closely interlinked. “The great advantage of this solution lies in its efficiency,” said Human Resources Director Gunnar Kilian of the dpa. “In this way, we don’t burden the production start-ups of new cars at the main plant with extensive conversion work and can at the same time convert it to the model of the new factory.”
Trinity also plays a key role in the restructuring of vehicle development. In the new developer headquarters “Campus Sandkamp”, which costs 800 million euros and whose construction is expected to start in 2022, the responsible board member Thomas Ulbrich wants to network the processes more closely with the work of IT experts and other departments.
According to Cavallos, it was also discussed with the management that “we are expanding the fields of batteries, charging and digitization around Trinity here in Wolfsburg”. There is already a competence center in Salzgitter, and a battery cell factory will be connected there. Further European cell plants are being planned, according to VW, locations have not yet been officially determined apart from Skellefteå in Sweden and are being negotiated with politicians due to the economic conditions.
In principle, the VW supervisory board had already approved the Trinity plans at the end of 2021 – the exact construction site was still open. The Prime Minister there, Dietmar Woidke (SPD), called the building permit for the Tesla plant in Brandenburg a “small ray of sunshine in difficult times”: “We worked hard together.” Electric car production could start in a few weeks.
Tesla initially set up the factory at its own risk via 19 early permits. Company boss Elon Musk had originally hoped to be able to start production in Grünheide as early as mid-2021. In a first phase, up to 500,000 cars per year with around 12,000 employees are planned. VW completed just a little less than 400,000 cars in Wolfsburg last year, the main reason for the low since the late 1950s was the lack of chips.
With regard to environmental regulations, the group announced that it would “closely exchange information with the responsible authorities and interest groups”. In Grünheide there had been protests from residents and conservationists, part of the site is in a water protection area.