VW's Dresden plant to be EV hub as ID.3 starts series production

DRESDEN: Dresden will become the hub for Volkswagen electric cars in future.

It has just recently begun series production of the all-electric ID. 3 at its so-called Transparent Factory here.

The Dresden site would also serve as a research and innovation centre that tests out projects for later use in large capacity sites at Volkswagen.

This makes it the second production site for the electric hatchback and already the fourth site in the world producing Volkswagen models based on the Modular Electric Drive Toolkit (MEB).

The Transparent Factory is already the fourth site in the world producing Volkswagen electric cars based on the Modular Electric Drive Toolkit.

The first site, the Zwickau plant, kicked off MEB production. At the end of 2020, the Chinese sites in Anting and Foshan also started production of MEB vehicles. Together, these four plants have a maximum production capacity of more than 900,000 vehicles a year. The next sites in Emden, Hanover and Chattanooga (USA) are also preparing for MEB production.

In future, significantly more vehicles will be handed over to customers in the Transparent Factory. To that end, a second delivery point was recently set up in the factory – which is unique in the automobile industry.

The number of vehicle handovers to customers is expected to increase from 1,301 in 2019 and 3,296 in 2020 to more than 5,000 vehicles in 2021. The goal is around 9,700 deliveries a year by 2022.

Since opening in 2001, the luxury sedan Phaeton (84,235 units, 2001-2016), the Bentley Flying Spur (2,186 units, 2005/2006 and 2013/2014) and, since 2017, the e-Golf (50,401 units) have rolled off the production line at the Dresden plant.