April - May 2021
Volkswagen goes electric with cheaper, more efficient batteries ENERGY
Better and cheaper batteries, improved range and reliability, and a fear of missing out on a sea change in the automotive industry are driving more and more manufacturers to up their electric car production
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he industry leaders are fast approaching the production of a critical mass to be able to offer buyers a kind of “vehicular herd immunity” from over-priced, over hyped and under-performing new offerings. Volkswagen is in the midst of a major shift towards battery-powered cars and says that it wants to have six battery-cell factories operating in Europe by 2030. The Germany based group is by far the biggest automaker in Europe and the second biggest in the world, manufacturing over
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10 million cars per year. On average, Volkswagen says, it will drive down the cost of battery systems to significantly below $119 per kilowatt hour which “will finally make e-mobility affordable and the dominant drive technology.” “E-mobility has become core business for us,” Chief Executive Herbert Diess told those gathered for Volkswagen’s Power Day, which also featured the leaders of BP, Enel and Iberdrola in an effort to match some of the buzz of Tesla’s Battery Day last September. “Our transformation will
be fast, it will be unprecedented.” The company plans to build half a dozen battery-cell plants in Europe and expand infrastructure for charging electric vehicles globally, accelerating efforts to overtake competitor Tesla and speed up mass adoption of battery-powered cars. In what is one of the most ambitious programmes in the industry, Volkswagen says the European factories will have a joint production capacity of up to 240 gigawatt hours (GWh) a year, Volkswagen did not specifically say how much
the plan will cost but had released information last December that it planned to spend more than US$40 billion on e-mobility by 2025. Volkswagen is also working on a major expansion
