Volkswagen has announced plans to use its Tennessee factory to develop cells and battery packs as it adds electric vehicle engineering at its US plant.
VW has plans to bring its MEB electric vehicles to the US by 2022. The automaker has continued its work developing next-generation electric cars based on its MEB platform at its factory in Germany. Now in just a few short years we should see the same in the US.
The German automaker’s plans include building a new factory next to its existing plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee that will house the engineering of EVs. VW said about the new Engineering and Planning Center in Chattanooga “To power those efforts, Volkswagen‘s Engineering and Planning Center in Chattanooga will soon feature a unique, state-of-the-art high-voltage laboratory designed to develop and test electric vehicle cells and battery packs for upcoming models assembled in the United States.”
Vice president of engineering at Volkswagen of America, Wolfgang Maluche, said “There are two ways that auto companies approach the development of electric vehicle batteries. A lot of them will farm out the development and testing of batteries to another company, and some will actually do the work of developing and testing in-house. We are doing the latter.”
The new factory will start producing the ID.4 in early 2022 with a starting price of $40,000 and a range of over 250 miles. VW expects the new lab to be fully operational by spring 2021.