As Tesla kicks off manufacturing at its new German plant this month, Volkswagen is weeks away from finalising plans for a 2 billion euro ($2.2 billion) electrical automobile (EV) manufacturing unit that it hopes will convey it up to the mark with its US rival.
Tesla says it may well already churn out a Model Y in 10 hours at its new Giga Berlin-Brandenburg manufacturing unit in Gruenheide close to the German capital, whereas it may well take Volkswagen 3 times as lengthy to make its ID.3 electrical automotive.
The German auto big now goals to slash manufacturing occasions with its “Trinity” EV plant, which ought to be up and operating in 2026, through the use of methods comparable to giant die casting and reducing the variety of elements in its vehicles by a number of hundred.
“Our goal is clear: we want to set the standard with our production,” Volkswagen model manufacturing chief Christian Vollmer informed Reuters in an interview. “If we can get to 10 hours, we have achieved something big.”
The carmaker has been enhancing productiveness at a price of about 5% a 12 months however should take larger leaps to maintain its higher hand within the European market, Vollmer mentioned, with out offering a brand new share goal.
Volkswagen, the world’s second-biggest carmaker behind Japan’s Toyota with a secure of manufacturers from Skoda, Seat and VW to Audi, Porsche and Bentley has a 25% share of the European EV market, forward of Tesla on 13%.
But the stress on German carmakers to each grasp and ramp up EV manufacturing has been intensified by Tesla’s presence within the nation and Volkswagen Chief Executive Herbert Diess has warned Germans should velocity as much as keep away from getting overwhelmed on their very own turf.
‘IGNITED THE DRIVE’
Volkswagen’s objectives align with a wider pattern within the trade of simplifying product ranges and streamlining manufacturing as carmakers scramble to seek out the money to fund the electrical transition – and sustain with rivals like Tesla that do not have to juggle making EVs in addition to vehicles with combustion engines.
“Tesla really ignited the drive for reducing part counts and making simpler products,” Evan Horetsky, a companion at McKinsey who was previously in command of engineering at Tesla’s new Brandenburg plant, mentioned. “Legacy manufacturers have a more difficult time because they have to maintain current orders.”
A Tesla spokesperson mentioned one of many causes it may well produce its Model Y automobiles in Germany inside a 10-hour time-frame is as a result of it’s makes use of two big casting presses, or giga-presses, making use of 6,000 tonnes of stress to make the rear of the automotive.
Its Gruenheide press store can produce 17 elements in below six minutes. With six extra giga-presses on the way in which, Tesla will quickly be making the entrance of the automotive with the giga-press too.
“That’s why we’re so fast,” the spokesperson mentioned.
The giga-casting method that VW plans to undertake was popularized by Tesla as a substitute for the extra labour-intensive methodology of assembling a number of stamped metallic panels with crumple zones to soak up power throughout a crash.
German luxurious carmaker BMW has rejected giant castings previously on the grounds that the upper prices of restore outweigh the decrease manufacturing prices.
But advocates say automated driving expertise will cut back the frequency of accidents: “Tesla is designing a vehicle that most likely won’t be in a severe crash,” Cory Steuben, president of producing consulting agency Munro & Associates, mentioned.
‘HUMAN-ROBOT COOPERATION’
While VW can produce sure fashions such because the Tiguan or Polo in 18 and 14 hours in Germany and Spain respectively, its electrical ID.3 – made in a manufacturing unit juggling six fashions from three Volkswagen manufacturers – nonetheless takes 30 hours to place collectively.
At the Trinity plant, a number of work steps will probably be condensed into one by means of automation, shrinking the scale of the physique store and decreasing the variety of jobs requiring uncomfortable bodily labour, Vollmer mentioned, dubbing it an enlargement of “human-robot cooperation”.
Volkswagen doesn’t plan to have giga-presses on the new plant in Wolfsburg and can as a substitute use the gear at its manufacturing unit in Kassel about 160 km (100 miles) away and transport the merchandise by prepare.
US funding financial institution JPMorgan predicts that Tesla’s Gruenheide manufacturing unit will produce about 54,000 vehicles in 2022, 280,000 in 2023 after which 500,000 by 2025.
Volkswagen, which delivered some 452,000 battery-electric automobiles globally final 12 months, has not but set an output goal for Trinity, which can use its Scalable Systems Platform.
It goals to construct 40 million automobiles worldwide on the brand new platform – which mixes a number of inside combustion engine and electrical platforms into one – with half of its international output all-electric by 2030.
Tesla, which produced 936,000 vehicles final 12 months, has mentioned it goals to place 20 million on the street a 12 months by the top of the last decade, or roughly double the present annual manufacturing of Toyota, the world’s largest carmaker now.
Still, Tesla can count on quite a few challenges because it expands in Germany, from securing extra water provides to environmental teams indignant about mild air pollution and congestion close to the plant to unions nervous a couple of management-heavy works council and wages being pushed down by employees coming in from elsewhere.
“Starting production is nice, but volume production is the hard part,” Musk informed a cheering viewers at a competition on the plant website in October 2021. “It will take longer to reach volume production than it took to build the factory.”
($1 = 0.8985 euros)
(Reporting by Victoria Waldersee, Jan Schwartz, Nadine Schimroszik and Hyun Joo Jin; Editing by David Clarke)
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With inputs from NDTV
