Today, the Volkswagen components plant in Salzgitter manufactures engine variants for more than 40 models in the Volkswagen Group as well as important e-components for electric vehicles. In the future, it is planned that the Salzgitter plant will become the battery centre for the Volkswagen Group. The changeover to future-oriented technologies is already taking place at a rapid pace.
Salzgitter
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Press releases
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Ground breaking in Salzgitter: Volkswagen enters global battery business with “PowerCo”
Volkswagen is consistently continuing its e-mobility strategy: to kick off its battery offensive, the Group broke the ground for its first cell factory in Salzgitter today in the presence of German Chancellor Olaf Scholz. Production will start in 2025. With immediate effect, responsibility for global battery business is to be held by the newly created company “PowerCo”. In addition to cell production, the new company will be responsible for activities along the entire battery value chain. Up to 2030, PowerCo is to invest more than €20 billion together with partners in the development of the business area, to generate annual sales in excess of €20 billion and to employ up to 20,000 people in Europe alone. -
Volkswagen Group and Salzgitter AG sign Memorandum of Understanding on supply of low-CO2 steel from the end of 2025
The Volkswagen Group and Salzgitter AG have enjoyed a close partnership for over 60 years. Now both want to open the next chapter together in the decarbonisation of their processes and products. The companies are today announcing a Memorandum of Understanding under which Volkswagen will become one of the first customers for the low-CO2 steel that Salzgitter AG plans to produce on a new production route at its headquarters in Lower Saxony from the end of 2025. According to Salzgitter AG, this will enable over 95 per cent of CO2 emissions in steel production to be saved in future on the basis of hydrogen and renewable energies. The Volkswagen Group plans to use the low-CO2 steel from the end of 2025 in important future projects such as the Trinity1 e-model, which will be produced in Wolfsburg from 2026. -
Volkswagen Group creates European company for its battery business
Volkswagen establishes a European company (Société Européenne) to consolidate activities along the value chain for batteries – from processing raw materials to developing a unified Volkswagen battery to managing the European gigafactories. The company’s scope will include new business models based around reusing discarded car batteries and recycling the valuable raw materials they contain. The Group is thus creating efficient and future-proof structures for the rapidly growing battery business. As part of its NEW AUTO strategy, the Volkswagen Group is aiming to become the world’s leading manufacturer of electric vehicles. To this end, it is expanding its battery-related activities and making these into one of its core competencies. -
New battery laboratories: Volkswagen takes the next step towards developing and producing own battery cells
Volkswagen Group Components today opened one of the most modern laboratories for cell research and development in Europe in Salzgitter. Thus, the company is further expanding its expertise in battery technology and taking the next step towards developing and producing its own battery cells for electromobility. From 2025 onwards, the Volkswagen unified cell is scheduled to roll off the production line in Salzgitter. In the future, around 250 experts will conduct research in the areas of cell development, analytics and testing in a total of four laboratories. Volkswagen is investing around 70 million euros in the facilities. -
Transforming old into new: Volkswagen Group Components commences battery recycling
Today, Volkswagen Group Components opened the Group’s first plant for recycling electric car batteries in Salzgitter. As pilot operation commences, the Volkswagen Group takes another committed step towards sustainable end-to-end responsibility for the entire value chain of the electric vehicle battery. The aim is the industrialised recovery of valuable raw materials such as lithium, nickel, manganese and cobalt in a closed loop together with aluminium, copper and plastics, achieving a recycling rate of more than 90% over the long term. -
Volkswagen invests in battery operations at Salzgitter
The joint venture between Volkswagen Group and the Swedish battery producer Northvolt AB is gaining further momentum. It has been decided that Volkswagen itself will erect the buildings and infrastructure for the joint venture’s “Northvolt Zwei” factory that is to produce lithium-ion battery cells, in order to leverage synergies at the Salzgitter site – based on the existing Center of Excellence for Battery Cells. Some €450 million is to be invested in this project. The joint venture will then rent the factory space. Battery cell production at the plant is scheduled to commence in early 2024 with an initial production capacity of 16 gigawatt hours. -
Volkswagen Group starts battery cell development and production in Salzgitter
The Volkswagen Group is setting benchmarks in the development, testing and production of cutting-edge battery cell technology in Germany. In Salzgitter (Lower Saxony) alone, over 1,000 jobs are to be created by 2023/24 for testing and producing battery cells – 300 at Volkswagen’s development center and pilot line, 700 in a joint venture between Northvolt and Volkswagen to build and operate a battery cell factory. Over one billion euros is to be invested in the Volkswagen Group’s battery cell activities over the same period.
Stories
From old to new – Battery recycling in Salzgitter
Something is happening in Salzgitter that has never been seen before in the Volkswagen Group – the first plant for recycling used electric car batteries is beginning operations. We look back at the development of this innovative and sustainable process.
A production facility that has become part of the family - Happy Birthday, Salzgitter!
When the Volkswagen plant in Salzgitter went into operation half a century ago, Georg Schoske was already an old hand at the company. “I had been manufacturing the Beetle in Wolfsburg since 1962. It was fun. But when Salzgitter opened, you didn’t have to ask me for long,” the 81-year-old recalls. Even then, Schoske lived with his family in Steinlah – 60 kilometers from the Wolfsburg plant, but only 20 kilometers from the Salzgitter plant. Even before the official inauguration, he switched. Since then the factory has become a family affair. Son Rainer Schoske (55) started his professional life in Salzgitter, as did grandson Marvin Schoske (23). Three generations – one factory.
Yesterday an engine plant – today an e-pioneer
The Salzgitter plant is getting ready for electric drives. While one of the 86 production lines is still used for building heavy six-cylinder engines, among other things, the workers next door are making a fist-sized electric pump.
