He Volkswagen Group A few hours ago it was confirmed that it will intensify its commitment to electric cars, and it will do so by expanding its production capacity with the start-up of what will be its first large battery manufacturing plant outside of Europe. A gigafactory to be located in Canada.
The objective is to expand its production in North America, in a bid to position itself in a market that is growing strongly in terms of demand for electric cars.
The Volkswagen Group and its battery company PowerCo selected the town of St. Thomas, Ontario, Canadato establish Volkswagen’s first overseas gigafactory for battery manufacturing.
A huge plant that has set out to minimize its environmental footprint by taking advantage of Canada’s huge renewable energy production, and which is scheduled to start production in throughout the year 2027.
According to Oliver Blume, CEO of the Volkswagen Group: “Our North American strategy is a key priority in our 10-point plan that we presented last year. With decisions for cell production in Canada and a factory for the Scout brand in South Carolina, we are accelerating the execution of our strategy in this market.”.
PowerCo’s decision to locate this plant in Ontario is a further step forward in the global deployment of the strategy to diversify battery supply sources for the group.
After Salzgitter and Sagunto (Valencia) this will be the Third Group-owned plant worldwide and PowerCo’s first switchgear factory in North America.
This will be responsible for supplying batteries to the Group’s electric cars in the region, and is part of a broader plan that Volkswagen and PowerCo agreed with the government of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in August last year. The Memorandum of Understanding signed at that time focuses on the value creation of batteries and the safety of raw materials to promote electric mobility in the country.
The challenge is to manage to feed a family of electric cars from the Volkswagen Group that in the United States alone will mean launching more than 25 new BEV models by 2030and that they will also have to be manufactured in the region to be able to access the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) subsidies.
And it is that as we remember, this law excludes from public aid electric cars manufactured outside the United States-Mexico-Canada free trade zone, including its battery, which will also have to have local materials and production.
Source | Volkswagen
