VW revs up production of e-components in China

Volkswagen is speeding up efforts to produce components in China for its electric vehicles, as the German carmaker works to become the most popular brand in the booming segment.

The first e-drive product for vehicles built based on Volkswagen's electric car-only MEB platform rolled off the assembly line of its transmission plant in Tianjin on Friday.

The company said the Tianjin plant started to produce new energy vehicle components in 2019, including the hybrid transmission.

"With the start of production of the APP310 e-drive, we are strengthening our local e-components production capabilities and taking a step closer to achieving both our global e-strategy, and group-wide carbon-neutrality by 2050," said Stephan Woellenstein, CEO of Volkswagen Group China.

Woellenstein expects Volkswagen to become the No 1 choice for new energy vehicles in China by around 2025.

He said the product will be used in the two ID.4 models that made their premieres earlier this month in Shenzhen, Guangdong province. The models are produced by its joint ventures FAW-Volkswagen and SAIC Volkswagen and are expected to hit the market in early 2021.

The e-drive will also be used in other ID models as well as MEB-based models bearing other brands within Volkswagen Group. The Volkswagen brand will introduce eight ID models by the end of 2023.

Volkswagen's two joint ventures, SAIC Volkswagen and FAW-Volkswagen, have a combined production capacity of 600,000 vehicles a year, with plants in Shanghai and Foshan, Guangdong province, respectively.

Volkswagen is confident that e-mobility is the direction of the future for the automotive industry and the market for new energy vehicles in China will boom in coming years.

In the first three quarters of the year, 34,190 Volkswagen-branded new energy vehicles were sold in the country, up 34 percent from the same period of 2019, despite the coronavirus pandemic.

In the same period, the total new energy vehicle sales in the country were 734,000, according to statistics from the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers. Their sales hit a monthly record of 160,000 in October, more than double the sales in the same month last year.