First machines arrive at German VW battery factory
Volkswagen’s battery cell factory in Salzgitter is making significant progress, with the installation of machinery and equipment now underway. According to VW, this sets the construction well on schedule and readies the plant for series production by 2025.
Starting with some background, Salzgitter is known as one of the first three battery factories Volkswagen is planning to build. Apart from Salzgitter, there is Valencia and St. Thomas in Ontario, Canada. Production is scheduled to start in Salzgitter in 2025 and in the other two plants in 2026 and 2027. The total capacity will amount to 200-gigawatt hours per year, enough for more than two million electric cars, according to Volkswagen. The batteries to be made will be the new “unit cells” for volume models. This is a prismatic battery cell that is to be used in 80 per cent of the VW Group’s electric vehicles in future.
All three factories will be managed by Volkswagen’s dedicated battery subsidiary PowerCo, and there has been news today on the company’s hiring offensive as well. PowerCo in May had announced plans to double its workforce and to hire employee number 1,000 this July. This has been confirmed today.
Moreover, PowerCo expects the number of employees to grow to 1,500 within the year. The average age is currently 38 years, and more than a quarter of employees have an international background, so the company. This was to be expected since PowerCo, from the start, negotiated with battery experts from Asia in its search for staff. The company also claims an above-average proportion of women of more than 30 per cent compared to the rest of the industry.
PowerCo CEO Frank Blome added today they were building “an absolute top team” and said the company had become “a magnet for experienced battery specialists who are in short supply and hot demand worldwide”.
In parallel, PowerCo is also upskilling workers from the VW engine plant in Salzgitter for battery production, and Blome added the retraining was “in full swing”.
Unboxing Volkswagen’s “Salzgiga”
Volkswagen Group is reportedly investing approximately two billion euros in transforming the Salzgitter site from a motor plant to a cell plant and laid the foundation stone in July 2022, then also introducing its far-reaching concept as a blueprint for all other battery plants.
Now, a year later, the “unboxing” has begun in Salzgitter. Volkswagen invited Lower Saxony’s Prime Minister Stephan Weil to unpack the first industrial machine that will be used in the cell factory. Weil had also been present when the foundations were laid. The machine he unwrapped today measures around 10 x 3 meters and marks the start of a new construction phase. “From now on, the ramp-up of the machine and equipment park begins,” writes Volkswagen. More than 2,500 standard containers are required for the delivery of the equipment alone.
Thomas Schmall, Volkswagen Group Board Member Group Technology, said, “A year ago, this was still an open field, but now we are already setting up the first high-tech machines. This shows the speed at which we are putting our plans into practice. PowerCo is well on its way to becoming a global player in the battery business and can become a new, future-proof powerhouse for Lower Saxony and Germany.”
Prime Minister Weil on site called the factory a “courageous and wise decision by Volkswagen”. He added that they “must ensure that Germany will continue to be the location of battery cell production in the future despite high energy costs”.
Once completed, the cell factory will rely entirely on renewable energies, and innovative production processes such as dry coating will reduce energy requirements by up to 30 per cent, so VW.
With a construction area of around 2 million square meters (equivalent to around 280 football fields), the Gigafactory Salzgitter is one of the largest construction projects in Lower Saxony. The plant, which was opened in 1970, will also house the VW Group’s ‘Global Battery Hub’. Here, the group will develop, test, manufacture and also recycle batteries at the component plant. In addition, a battery academy and a supplier park will be located in Salzgitter.
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