According to German news agency DPA, Volkswagen Group intends to invest 10 billion euros to build a lithium-ion battery production plant in Germany. The project is expected to surpass the Tesla Gigafactory (Gigafactory) as the largest battery factory ever.

Volkswagen rumored to want to build largest battery plant ever

Volkswagen could build a new battery plant in Salzgitter, Germany, with an investment of 10 billion euros ($11 billion), laying the groundwork for the realization of millions of electric cars to be sold annually by 2025, according to VW insiders. However, VW CFO Frank Witter said that the company has not yet made a decision on the new battery plant project, but only carried out a variety of scenarios to deduce, also including the scenario similar to the gigafactory.

Originally, the Tesla Gigafactory was to be the world's largest lithium-ion battery production plant in the future, comparable to the combined capacity of all lithium-ion batteries in the world today, including the computer and cell phone industries. However, the new VW battery plant will be twice as large in terms of the amount of investment and the number of vehicles it will support.

According to Tesla's plan, the total investment in the Gigafactory in Nevada, U.S., is about $5 billion (including Panasonic's investment of $1.6 billion), which will be put into operation in 2017, and by 2020 the battery cell production capacity can reach 35 megawatt-hours, and the battery pack production capacity is 50 megawatt-hours. Tesla plans to sell 500,000 cars a year in the future, the entry car Model 3 will be the main force, the giga factory is precisely the main for the Tesla Model 3 supporting.

As a comparison, VW's new battery plant is an $11 billion investment, more than double that of the Gigafactory, and by 2025 VW plans to sell 1 million pure EVs and plug-in hybrids per year, which is also double Tesla's planned future production and sales.

Volkswagen's push into electric cars

In the field of new energy vehicles, Volkswagen Group is relatively late to the game, less so than rivals such as Toyota, Renault-Nissan and General Motors. The Volkswagen brand plans to produce 12,140 e-Golf all-electric cars and 13,400 Golf GTE plug-in hybrids this year. Tesla sold 50,580 Model S premium electric sedans last year, and Renault-Nissan's EV sales last year were claimed at 75,000 and 85,000 units, depending on the statistical caliber, both of which far exceeded VW's target for this year.

Cumulative sales of the Volkswagen brand's electric vehicles to date are expected to reach around 103,000 units by the end of this year.

Currently, the Volkswagen Group brands have a total of nine electric vehicle models, including three pure electric vehicles (Volkswagen e-Up!, Volkswagen e-Golf and Audi R8 e-tron) and six plug-in hybrids (Volkswagen Golf GTE, Volkswagen Passat GTE, Audi A3 hatchback e-tron, Audi Q7 e-tron quattro, Porsche Panamera S E-Hybrid and Cayenne S E-Hybrid).

By 2020, the Volkswagen Group's EV lineup will double to 20 new products, two of which will compete with Tesla - the Porsche Mission E EV and the Audi e-tron quattro, which will be Audi's first mass-produced EV, with a blueprint said to be the legendary Audi Q6.

Volkswagen is releasing new vehicles based on the MEB EV modular platform in 2019, in addition to considering the addition of new EV-specific platforms.

In an effort to control costs, VW has consolidated production of the e-Golf and Golf GTE on its production line at its Wolfsburg headquarters, where they are assembled alongside four Golf derivatives, including the Touareg crossover and the Touran, with production time added by only about an hour extra, and an additional 5% over the Golf's conventionally powered models.VW executives say if demand rises sharply, VW will have greater flexibility to boost e-Golf and Golf GTE supply.