VW plans E-Golf production in Wolfsburg

The Volkswagen brand has outlined plans for the future of its German production network. The Group Board informed the Volkswagen Group Supervisory Board about plant occupancy up to the year 2028, according to Wolfsburg. The company is aligning its locations with economic utilization and future outlook for the coming years. Efficient plant occupancy and productivity enhancement are important components of the performance program Accelerate forward | Road to 6.5 initiated by the brand.

Diess plans become obsolete

Apparently, the plans of former Group CEO Herbert Diess are also being reviewed. There is now expected to be an electric successor to the current Golf VIII, possibly instead of an ID.3 successor. However, according to Spiegel information, the model, which is also expected to have a Cupra variant, will not come to market before 2030, as it is based on the SSP ("Scalable Systems Platform"), which is expected to be ready by then. Diess's plans for a "Giga-VW-Factory" similar to Tesla's in Wolfsburg Warmenau also seem to be off the table. The money is to be invested in existing plants, such as the future Trinity plant in Zwickau.

“With the transformation in an economically challenging environment, our industry faces complex tasks. It is all the more important that we make our individual plants and the Volkswagen production network in Germany future-proof. With the plant occupancy now adopted, we are also making a substantial contribution to a strong, competitive VW brand as part of our performance program," explained Thomas Schäfer, CEO of the Volkswagen brand.

Christian Vollmer, Volkswagen brand's production board member and member of the extended group management for production, added that they are using the transition to electromobility to reduce complexity in production and make the plants even more efficient.

"We consistently group vehicles based on the same architecture across brands in our plants. This prevents plants from having to invest a lot of money in integrating different vehicle architectures. Instead, our goal is for the plants to produce multiple models based on the technical foundation of a vehicle architecture," Vollmer continued.

Daniela Cavallo, Chairwoman of the General Works Council of Volkswagen AG, said that with the decisions for the domestic vehicle-producing VW plants, an important stage of the planning round has been taken.

"This demonstrates that the company and the works council, even in difficult times, can work together to find solid solutions that combine the best possible economic utilization of the factories and clear prospects for our workforce,” praised Cavallo.