picture alliance / dpa
VW plant in Shanghai: Also in the East China Hefei a VW plant is to be created – for the construction of electric cars
The carmaker Volkswagen is expanding its capacity for electric cars China out. Together with their Chinese partner JAC, the Wolfsburg have received the green light to build a plant for the equivalent of around 700 million euros in Hefei in the East China region, as evidenced by documents published on the Internet by the local environmental authority.
The construction of the factory with a planned annual capacity of 100,000 vehicles had been announced by Volkswagen and JAC in the founding of their joint venture. The first electric car, the E20X, should be launched later this year. With the factory VW wants to serve the demand for cheap electric cars in China.
The People’s Republic is the largest market of the Dax Group. The VW brand sells half of its vehicles there, and around 40 percent across the Group. Volkswagen is currently investing heavily in electromobility in order to meet the stricter global climate requirements.
Most of VW’s electric cars are to be built in China
Within ten years, the group is expected to produce around 22 million e-cars, more than half of them in China. 14 so-called New Energy Vehicles – in addition to pure electric cars and hybrid cars are counted – are expected this year in China on the market. At the same time, VW is expanding its research and development capacities in the Middle Kingdom. Volkswagen’s 4,000 IT experts and programmers in China will write the necessary software for driver assistance systems and other parts of the global autonomous driving IT architecture.
In the past year, passenger car demand on the world’s largest car market had fallen for the first time since the 1990s. The demand for New Energy Vehicle is still growing rapidly. Their sales climbed more than 60 percent to 1.3 million vehicles. For this year, the industry association expects an increase to 1.6 million units.
VW has already begun construction of a factory for electrified vehicles near Shanghai, where it is investing a good two billion euros at the Anting site together with its Chinese partner SAIC. From 2020, the new plant should be able to build around 300,000 vehicles a year on the basis of the MEB electrical construction kit. Together with the state-owned partner FAW, the factory in Foshan will be converted to the production of electric cars. So far, VW imports the eGolf, locally produced is the Audi A6 Letron, a car specially developed for China with plug-in hybrid drive.
la / reuters