Volkswagen (VW) is stepping up its game to become the world’s biggest electric carmaker with a plan to build six battery factories in Europe and global investments in charging stations.
The manufacturer, which has agreements for two sites, is exploring options for another four plants for a total capacity of 240GWh by the end of the decade, VW said on Monday in a statement. VW has the most comprehensive electric vehicle (EV) plan in the industry that will add about 50 purely battery-powered vehicles to its line-up by 2030.
“We are now systematically integrating additional stages in the value chain,” CEO Herbert Diess said. “We secure a long-term pole position in the race for the best battery.”
The plants will have a capacity of 40GWh each, and VW is looking for partners for four of them for development. The carmaker changed course to build a site in Salzgitter, Germany, on its own after a previous plan to join forces with Northvolt. The battery firm will still be its partner for a factory at Skelleftea in Sweden, announcing VW will order $14bn in battery cells.
Emulating Tesla as well as General Motors with a dedicated battery event on Monday, dubbed “Power Day”, VW is giving the deepest dive yet on its strategy to beat a path to an electric future selling millions of EVs. Batteries have emerged as the main battleground with concerns over high costs squeezing margins and supply of raw materials such as nickel and cobalt.
VW will also invest €400m by 2025 to build out much-needed charging infrastructure in Europe after the region overtook China in EV sales last year. Fast-charging in Europe will grow fivefold to 18,000 stations, helped by co-operation with BP in the UK, Iberdrola and Spain and Enel in Italy as well as VW’s existing Ionity GmbH consortium.
In North America, VW is adding 3,500 stations for this year and 17,000 points in China by 2025. Co-operation on charging as well as strategic partnerships on batteries will help VW safeguard financial targets including a 6% capital investment ratio by 2025 and an adjusted annual net cash flow of more than €10bn, it said.
The carmaker aims to at least double its share of deliveries that are fully electric this year, which could bring it within striking distance of Tesla’s EV sales. After years of trailing Tesla, VW’s ID.3 hatchback and the Porsche Taycan based on dedicated underpinnings have stacked up well.
As carmakers scale up EV offerings, Tesla and other new entrants such as Nio are stepping up their plans. Tesla expects to add a battery-cell factory to the car-assembly plant under construction near Berlin. The site will initially have a capacity of more than 100GWh a year and eventually ramp up to as much as 250GWh, CEO Elon Musk said during a battery conference in November.
Bloomberg
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