Preparations for the start of ID.3 – the first all-electric Volkswagen for the E-era – are in full swing. The world premiere is scheduled for September at the IAA in Frankfurt with production beginning at the end of the year in Zwickau, to which the participating plants of the Volkswagen Group Components will make important contributions. Production at these plants will begin in the next few days.
While Volkswagen’s main location in Wolfsburg designed and developed the Modular Electric Toolkit (MEB), the drive shafts and tests the range and performance, the three plants in Brunswick, Salzgitter and Kassel produce important components for the electric car. The battery system is manufactured in Brunswick, and the electric drive in Kassel, for which the Salzgitter plant supplies the stator and rotors.
Base+ on the rear axle
With the ID. family, Volkswagen makes e-mobility possible for the masses. The e-drive system plays a decisive role here. It is called Base+ and will power all vehicles of the ID. family in Europe and North America in the future. A special feature is that it is not located in the front of the vehicle, but integrated into the rear axle. Base+ will be assembled in Hall 1 of the Kassel site, where various engine components such as the rotor and stator will be assembled from components manufactured at the Salzgitter, Poznań and Hanover component plants.
Production of Base+ for the pre-series has recently begun, with around 1,000 employees working on final assembly. In future, around 2,000 units will be produced every working day, which corresponds to around 500,000 units per year. Together with the Tianjin components plant in China, Volkswagen Group Components will produce up to 1.4 million units per year from 2023 onwards. This makes the company one of the world's largest manufacturers of electric drives in the future.