BERLIN : As Tesla kicks off production at its new German plant this month, Volkswagen is weeks away from finalising plans for a 2 billion euro electric vehicle factory that it hopes will bring it up to speed with its U.S. rival.
"Our goal is clear: we want to set the standard with our production," Volkswagen brand production chief Christian Vollmer told Reuters in an interview."If we can get to 10 hours, we have achieved something big." But the pressure on German carmakers to both master and ramp up EV production has been intensified by Tesla's presence in the country and Volkswagen Chief Executive Herbert Diess has warned Germans must speed up to avoid getting beaten on their own turf.
Its Gruenheide press shop can produce 17 components in under six minutes. With six more giga-presses on the way, Tesla will soon be making the front of the car with the giga-press too.The giga-casting technique that VW plans to adopt was popularised by Tesla as an alternative to the more labour-intensive method of assembling multiple stamped metal panels with crumple zones to absorb energy during a crash.
At the Trinity plant, multiple work steps will be condensed into one through automation, shrinking the size of the body shop and reducing the number of jobs requiring uncomfortable physical labour, Vollmer said, dubbing it an expansion of"human-robot cooperation". Volkswagen, which delivered some 452,000 battery-electric vehicles globally last year, has not yet set an output target for Trinity, which will use its Scalable Systems Platform.