Volkswagen invests £750m in electric battery manufacturing ahead of e-vehicle mass production
Volkswagen is to start making electric car batteries and charging points, as it readies itself to mass produce electric vehicles in the coming years.
The German car maker said today it will invest $870m (£754m) by 2020 in developing parts for electric cars, adding its batteries operation would make new battery cells as well as recycling old cells.
Read more: Volkswagen is planning a new US plant for electric cars as it takes the fight to Tesla
Shares in the group were up 2.5 per cent this morning.
VW said it would also start producing charging stations for electric cars at its plant in Hannover, Germany, which currently manufactures engines and castings.
The firm will combine cells from electric car batteries into storage powerbanks that can recharge up to 15 cars at a time, and be transported to areas where they may be temporary demand for car charging, such as a concert or a sports event.
A smartphone app will show customers where they can find the mobile charging stations, it said.
“It can be set up flexibly and independent of the power supply wherever it is needed: for example, in public parking lots in the city, on company premises, or as a temporary charging point at large-scale events,” VW said.
The first mobile charging stations will be set up this year in VW’s hometown of Wolfsburg and rolled out to other cities in 2020.
Last week, VW and US car maker Ford confirmed plans to work together to develop their electric and autonomous cars offerings.
Read more: Volkswagen deliveries fall year-on-year in December
Volkswagen has struggled to get to grips with the introduction of more stringent emissions standards on European car makers, which have prompted a decline in sales since September. Volkswagen’s reported sales were down 37 per cent that month.
But VW’s sales were down just eight per cent in December, indicating it is slowly adapting to the new so called worldwide light vehicles test procedure (WLTP)