Written by / Zhu Lin
Edited / Meng for
Design / Shi Yuchao
Source: Reuters, topelectricsuv, by Victoria Waldersee, Jan Schwartz, Nadine Schimroszik
As Tesla begins production at its new plant in Germany in March, a 2 billion euro electric car factory program for Volkswagen will also be finalized in a matter of weeks, hoping the plant will catch up with Tesla, a U.S. rival.
Tesla says it could already produce a Model Y in 10 hours at its new Glenhead plant in Brandenburg, near Berlin. The Volkswagen ID.3 electric car takes about three times as long to produce it.
Volkswagen's goal now is to use its "Trinity" electric vehicle factory to cut production time. The plant is expected to be completed and put into use in 2026, and the production method is also to learn tesla, employ technologies such as large die casting, and reduce the number of parts in the car by hundreds.
"Our goal is clear: to set the standard for production." Christian Vollmer, Head of Brand Production at Volkswagen, said in an interview, "If we can reduce the production time to 10 hours, it will be a great achievement." ”
Volmer said Volkswagen has been ramping up productivity at a rate of about 5 percent a year, and while the latest percentage increase target has not yet been announced, they must now make a bigger leap forward to maintain their leading position in the European market.
Volkswagen is the world's second-largest automaker, after Japan's Toyota, with brands ranging from Skoda, SEAT and Volkswagen to Audi, Porsche and Bentley, with a 25% share of the European electric vehicle market, ahead of Tesla by 13%.
However, in terms of mastering and increasing the production of electric vehicles, the pressure on Volkswagen has been increasingly intensified by Tesla's production to Bring Production to Germany. Herbert Diess, volkswagen's chief executive, warned that the Germans must pick up pace so as not to be defeated on their own turf.
Ignite the momentum
Volkswagen's goal is in line with the industry's megatrend of streamlining product lineups and streamlining production, as automakers scramble to find cash to fund the electric transition and catch up with rivals like Tesla. The latter are much less stressed because they don't have to juggle manufacturing electric and fuel vehicles.
"Tesla really ignited the drive to reduce the number of parts and make simple products." Evan Horetsky, a Partner at McKinsey and formerly in charge of Tesla's new factory in Brandenburg, said, "The days are even more difficult for traditional manufacturers because they have to maintain current orders." ”
A Tesla spokesperson said it took Tesla only 10 hours to produce a Model Y car at its German factory, one of the reasons for which it used two huge casting presses, the "Giga Press," which can apply 6,000 tons of pressure to cast the entire rear body of the entire product in one piece.
The Glenhead press shop can produce 17 parts in 6 minutes. Six other Giga Press die casting machines are also coming, and Tesla will soon be able to use them to build the front of the car's body.
"That's why we can be so fast." The spokesperson said.
The giant die-casting technology volkswagen plans to adopt was popularized by Tesla, an alternative to labor-intensive production that can assemble multiple stamped metal plates with collapse zones to absorb energy in the event of a collision.
German luxury car manufacturer BMW has refused to use large castings in the past, citing higher maintenance costs than lower manufacturing costs.
But advocates of this approach say self-driving technology will reduce the frequency of accidents. Cory Steuben, president of manufacturing consultancy Munro & Associates, said: "Tesla is designing a vehicle that is unlikely to have a serious accident. ”
Human-machine cooperation
While Volkswagen's plants in Germany and Spain can produce certain models, such as Tiguan or Polo, in 18 and 14 hours, respectively, its electric vehicle ID.3 still takes 30 hours to assemble, and the plant that produces the ID.3 takes into account six models of the three Volkswagen brands.
At the Trinity plant, multiple work steps will be compressed into one by automation, reducing the size of the body shop floor and reducing uncomfortable manual labor, Volmer said, an extension of "human-machine collaboration."
Volkswagen does not intend to install giga press at its new plant in Wolfsburg, but will use the device at its kassel plant, about 160 kilometers away, and transport products by train.
U.S. investment bank JPMorgan Chase predicts that Tesla's Glenhead plant will produce about 54,000 vehicles in 2022, 280,000 in 2023 and then 500,000 by 2025.
Volkswagen, which delivered approximately 452,000 pure electric vehicles worldwide in 2021, aims to use Trinity's Scalable Systems Platform to combine multiple internal combustion engines and electric platforms into one, manufacturing 40 million vehicles worldwide, achieving its goal of half of its global production of pure electric vehicles by 2030.
Tesla will produce 936,000 vehicles in 2021 and aims to produce 20 million vehicles per year by 2030, roughly double the annual production of Toyota, the world's largest automaker in the world.
Still, Tesla's expansion in Germany could face numerous challenges, not only to secure more water supplies, but also to deal with angry environmental groups, which often protest light pollution and congestion near the factory; and labor committees, which fear the factory's heavy management efforts and the low wages of migrant workers.
In October 2021, Musk told the cheering audience at a celebration at the factory site: "It is good to be able to start production, but mass production is the difficult part." The time required to reach mass production will be longer than the time it takes to build a plant. ”
This article was originally produced by Automotive Business Review
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