VW to upgrade Emden factory over summer break

Volkswagen has announced that it will be pushing ahead with a number of construction projects at the Emden site during the upcoming plant holiday. More than 1,000 employees and external workers are to work on around 300 construction sites between 2 and 27 August for the transformation to an EV production site.

According to Volkswagen, the transformation is to be completed in the first half of 2022 and volume production of e-vehicles will start. This will initially involve the ID.4, which will then be built at two locations in Germany in addition to Zwickau. In addition, two plants in China will produce the ID.4 X and ID.4 Crozz versions there, and later the ID.4 will also be built at the US plant in Chattanooga.

Back to Emden: the conversion to an MEB site has been underway there since July 2020. In May, VW had still stated that the work was on schedule. “In the next four weeks, we will be setting further important course for the start-up of the ID.4 in Emden,” says plant manager Uwe Schwartz. “The transformation into Volkswagen’s second major electric plant in Germany after Zwickau is now entering the decisive phase.” At the same time, the existing production is being optimised to ensure a “smooth restart” for the Passat and Arteon after the plant holiday.

Specifically, one of the two assembly lines will be dismantled during the plant holidays to gain free space. In future, the Passat and Arteon will be assembled on only one line instead of two.

According to the report, “extensive adjustments will be made throughout the body shop, especially for future MEB volumes”. For the transport of the e-vehicles, around 17 kilometres of conveyor line will be converted in the paint shop alone. In total, more than 20 production-relevant construction sites are being worked on in this production area, according to VW.

In order to further prepare for the start of production of the ID.4 in 2022, 200 employees will transfer to the Zwickau plant in Saxony by the end of the year in order to gain experience with ID.4 production there.

In addition to the ID.4, the fully electric production versions of the ID.Vizzion and ID.Space Vizzion show cars are also scheduled to come off the production line in Emden from 2023 onwards. These are a sedan and the accompanying estate car the size of a Passat. The sedan study was presented in 2018 with a 111 kWh battery (for a range of 650 kilometres according to WLTP), while the station wagon study shown in 2019 featured the familiar 77 kWh battery.

With reporting by Sebastian Schaal, Germany.

volkswagen-newsroom.com (in German)