Volkswagen has announced it will retrain 22,000 workers at its Wolfsburg plant by 2025, preparing them for the addition of electric vehicles to the factory’s production line.
By summer 2023, around 1200 employees will have been trained to build the heavily updated Volkswagen ID 3 electric hatchback (pictured below), ahead of production beginning in autumn. This will initially be in limited capacity – referred to as “subassembly” in an official Volkswagen statement – before escalating to “substantial numbers” in 2024.
Wolfsburg will also host production of a new electric SUV (also based on the ID 3’s MEB platform) “in the near future”, said the statement.
Autocar previously reported that Volkswagen brand CEO Thomas Schäfer had signed off development of an ID 3-based crossover to give the firm another product in the “fast-growing” small SUV segment. This will arrive before 2026 and will look dramatically different to the ID 3 hatchback – rather than taking on ‘Russian-doll’ styling.
Read more: Volkswagen ID 3 compact SUV, two £20k entry-level EVs confirmed
In total, the company will launch 10 electric cars by 2026 (including facelifts of current models).
Speaking about the plant’s expansion, its manager Rainer Fessel said: “The new production line in Wolfsburg will give us more flexibility than ever before.
“The assembly line will be the first at one of the Volkswagen brand’s passenger car plants in Germany that is able to build both MEB [EV] and ICE vehicles on the same line. With the future SSP platform, this will make Wolfsburg Volkswagen’s first multi-platform factory a few years from now.
“That will give the main plant a major advantage in terms of capacity utilisation over the next 10 years. It is how we are safeguarding jobs at the Wolfsburg plant and giving our workforce a clear perspective for the future.”
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