Volkswagen To Begin Manufacturing EVs In North America In 2021

Volkswagen will begin manufacturing electric vehicles in North America starting in 2021, or so the company claims, going on recent reports. This expansion of production in North America is reportedly part of the firm’s plan to gradually work up to 2–3 million fully electric vehicle sales globally a year by 2025. (Electric vehicles in this case doesn’t mean just all-electrics.)

The company plans for electrified vehicles to become “the strategic core of the VW brand,” as Volkswagen-brand head Herbert Diess recently put it in an interview with Automotive News. The plan, according to the exec, is for electric vehicles to make up the expected shortfall for internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicle sales.

Notably, Volkswagen currently does manufacture some models in North America, with some assembly facilities in Mexico and a single US facility. In Mexico, VW assembles the Golf, Jetta, and Beetle. Though, the company’s manufacturing capabilities are mostly based out of Europe.

According to Deiss, the manufacturing expansion in North America will, as you would expect, relate to models which are expected to sell well in the US. This apparently relates to SUVs and limousines, amongst other vehicles, according to Diess. (That’s an interesting view of the US. And yet the Tesla Model 3, with ~400,000 reservations, isn’t an SUV or a limo, is it?)

As a reminder, Volkswagen is currently claiming that a production version of the all-electric ID concept vehicle revealed earlier this year will hit the market sometime around 2020. So, it seems fairly likely that the company intends to manufacture that model in the US.