Volkswagen Group has given an update on its plans for production of electric vehicles in Germany following a meeting by senior staff held on Friday.
In an effort to curb costs, the automaker has decided to abandon plans for a second plant at its headquarters in Wolfsburg. The plant was announced in early 2022 and was slated to build a much-hyped technological flagship for the Volkswagen brand code-named Trinity, as well as additional vehicles all based on a next-generation EV platform known as the SSP.
The Trinity will now be built at VW Group's Zwickau plant, where VW's ID.3, ID.4, and ID.5 are currently built, together with the related Audi Q4 E-Tron and Cupra Born.
“Our industry faces complex challenges as it undergoes a transformation that is being conducted under difficult business conditions,” Thomas Schäfer, the CEO of the VW brand, said in a statement. “Within the context of our performance program, this newly approved vehicle allocation plan will make a substantial contribution to a strong, competitive VW brand.”
Volkswagen plant in Wolfsburg, Germany
Other SSP-based EVs will be built at other VW Group plants, including the existing plant in Wolfsburg. One of these EVs was confirmed on Friday as the next-generation VW Golf. Schäfer first hinted at plans for an electric Golf on the SSP platform in April. He said at the time the model won't arrive until late in the decade since the SSP platform won't be ready until 2028.
The SSP platform was originally due in 2026 but has been delayed by two years. First announced in 2021, the platform is being developed to accept battery cells and software systems that will be common across most of the models from the VW Group, making it easier to build a variety of models in the same plant, something that was highlighted on Friday by Christian Vollmer, head of production for the VW brand.
“We are systematically bundling vehicles based on the same architecture across all brands in our plants,” Vollmer said in a statement. “We want our plants to produce several different models on the technical basis of one vehicle architecture.”
VW Group on Friday also announced a few additional models for production at the existing Wolfsburg plant. The recently revealed redesigned global Tiguan will start production there shortly and will be followed in 2025 by a longer compact crossover that the U.S. is expected to receive as its Tiguan (a vehicle likely to be built in North America). An electric crossover was also confirmed to start production at the Wolfsburg plant in 2026, thought to be an electric Tiguan.
