Production began in Germany at the Volkswagen brand’s first electric SUV, marking the world’s newest drive for cleaner vehicles.
By Charles Riley, CNN Business
Production began in Germany at the Volkswagen brand’s first electric SUV, marking the world’s newest drive for cleaner vehicles.
Volkswagen announced Thursday that production of the ID. 4 compact SUV had begun at its Zwickau plant, which was changed to a charge of 1. 2 billion euros (1. 4 billion) to manufacture 300,000 electric cars in line with the year.
The ID. 4 may compete with Tesla, which already offers an electric SUV called Model Y. Audi, Volkswagen’s luxury brand, has been generating an electric SUV called e-tron at a factory in Brussels, Belgium, since 2018. .
Volkswagen logo manager Ralf Brandstotter said in a statement that the ID. 4 enables the automaker to offer an electric vehicle in “the world’s largest expansion segment. ” He said the SUV would be manufactured and sold first in Europe and China. with US production scheduled to begin in 2022 in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
According to Volkswagen, the SUV will have a travel of up to 500 kilometers (311 miles) and will have its world premiere in September.
The German group, which also owns Porsche, Bugatti, Skoda, Lamborghini and SEAT, plans to dedicate 33 billion euros ($39 billion) to mobility until 2024. It expects to produce 1. 5 million cars by 2025.
The ID. 4 is the vehicle at the moment built on the company’s new modular car production platform, or MEB. The first, a small car called ID. 3, also occurs at the Zwickau plant.
“We are in full time with the Volkswagen logo procedure for electric mobility. ID. 3 is now being tracked through ID. 4,” said Thomas Ulbrich, Volkswagen’s head of electric mobility.
Car factories around the world were forced to close this year as the coronavirus pandemic accelerated. Volkswagen reopened its extensive Wolfsburg plant in April and re-production in the following months.
“Given the wonderful social demand situations of recent months, the successful release of production of the ID. 4 series is an exceptional achievement,” Ulbrich said.