LEIPZIG, Germany: Volkswagen will create joint ventures and help finance battery production to persuade skeptical cell suppliers to back its aggressive push for mass producing electric vehicles, board member Stefan Sommer told Reuters.
"These producers need to prioritize between making a new smartphone or building a new battery factory. So even the battery cell producers are asking: will production volumes scale up quickly?," he said. This is why VW provides suppliers with finance for tooling and shares the risk of installing new production capacity by making new factories a joint venture.
"We have not been able to build as many cars as we wanted to. Our supplier is not delivering the numbers that we need."