The Stuttgart sports car manufacturer Porsche wants to largely hire its battery subsidiary Cellforce. A corresponding mass dismissal was reported to the responsible employment agency in Reutlingen, reports the MIRROR. Around 200 employees are affected.
What would remain at the seat of Cellforce in the Swabian Kirchentellinsfurt would at best be a small unity for research and development. Porsche boss Oliver Blume (57) informed the green-black state government around Prime Minister Winfried Kretschmann (77; Greens) after DPA information about the project. Manager Magazin recently reported From Blumes’s renovation plans at the sports car manufacturerÂ
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The settlement in Kirchentellinsfurt was promoted with tax money. Around 60 million euros were announced. How much money actually flowed was initially unclear. A Porsche spokeswoman rejected a statement. A spokesman for Kretschmann said that it is generally not expressed about internal conversations.
At the end of April, the car manufacturer had announced that the battery cell daughter did not want to continue. Finally, investors were still searched. As Der Spiegel continues, emissary from at the beginning of August were BMW in Kirchentellinsfurt. Armaments companies should also be interested in the parts of Cellforce to develop batteries for military drones.
Porsche wanted to become an electric forwarder
Porsche announced the introduction of high-performance battery cells in the presence of Prime Minister Kretschmann in the summer of 2021. The production in Tübingen should actually be raised. However, the settlement failed due to legal hurdles. According to its own statements, the company currently has around 280 employees. In addition to manufacturing in Kirchentellinsfurt, there was also a significantly larger Porsche battery factory in conversation, with 20 gigawatt hours of annual capacity-enough for almost the brand’s entire electrical fleet, not just for high-performance models.
At times there was even a location in North America in the room, lured by cheap energy and high subsidies. But since Porsche produces almost exclusively in Europe, the transport of the cells over the Atlantic would have made little sense. All plans.
Cellforce a “laboratory experiment”?
At Porsche, according to “Spiegel”, resentment over the lost daughter Cellforce grew, which is said to have been mocked internally as a “laboratory experiment”, which is why the car maker urgently looked for a partner for the industrialization of the daughter. Talks with Northvolt ran in the sand because the manufacturer himself slipped into the crisis and later registered bankruptcy. VWS battery subsidiary Powerco is also said to have been negotiated in the meantime – without success.
The end of Cellforce is a drastic step for the VW subsidiary. CEO Blume wanted to make the sports car manufacturer to the electric loader with his own battery supplement. The change to e-mobility runs much slower than expected. Porsche has been investing in new internal combustion engines since the beginning of the year. Now threatens the manager who also VolkswagenGroup leads a slump with its ambitions. According to Porsche, depreciation on the Cellforce production facilities, according to the report, cost 295 million euros.
According to union information, all employees are invited to a general assembly for the next Monday. Porsche’s development director Michael Steiner (61) is said to speak there. Many Cellforce employees could threaten unemployment because, unlike the mother, there is no employment guarantee there.