VW pauses electric car production in Emden

Emden faces the same situation as Zwickau, where VW announced pausing production yesterday. According to local media, the reason is a shortage of drives, which will hold up the assembly in Zwickau until December. The VW ID.4 and ID.5 and Audi Q4 e-tron and Q4 Sportback e-tron usually roll off line 2. More than 1,000 of the total of around 8,000 employees are expected to be affected by the production shutdown.

And this is the same in Emden, although it appears the plant will only pause five days and over the weekend, as a spokesperson told the German press agency DPA.

This missing motor is due to a model makeover. VW Group entered the new model year for these SUVs, which replaced the 150 kW PSM on the rear axle with the new APP550. It offers 210 kW of power and 550 Nm (instead of the previous 310 Nm) of maximum torque. The new electric motor claims higher efficiency, increasing the range.

However, the VW component plant in Kassel, which delivers the new motors, has been experiencing disruptions in the supply chain for the APP550. As a result, fewer units of the “performance electric motor” were arriving in Zwickau; the few available APP550s were prioritised for Emden to keep the ramp-up of the new VW ID.7 going. Now, even Emden was forced to shut down – temporarily.

In Zwickau, production line 1 for the VW ID.3 and Cupra Born is unaffected since these models utilise the older electric drive with 150 kW of power and 310 Nm of torque. Even though Kassel also manufactured said drive, the supply chain appears uninterrupted.

Due to weak demand, Volkswagen had already stopped EV production in Zwickau on production line 1 for around two weeks in October. Production of the two models has since resumed in three shifts.

ndr.de, spiegel.de (both in German)