This is where your Volkswagen is build!

This is where your Volkswagen is build!

“Please get in. Soon you’ll see Europe’s largest car factory,” says Rene Busch. The employee from the Guest Relations department makes an inviting gesture, takes a seat behind the wheel of the e-Golf* and starts the motor. Intrigued, guests from the Dortmund Motorsport Club hop in the vehicles behind the e-Golf. They woke up early that morning to take a more than three-hour drive to Wolfsburg. Members of the club spent the morning visiting the Autostadt – and now they are looking forward to visiting the main Volkswagen plant. “I have been here several times but I still haven’t seen everything. You could spend the entire week here,” says motorsport fan Uwe Bachmann.

That is certainly true, since just the factory’s hall space currently in use (1.6 square kilometers) is approximately as large as the Principality of Monaco. There is clearly always something new to discover here. In addition to four Volkswagen models, including the Golf, the Wolfsburg plant just recently started producing the SEAT Tarraco, which rounds out the SUV family for the Group's Spanish subsidiary. In Wolfsburg, the Tarraco is currently being produced together with the Tiguan and the Touran.

The tour with the e-Golf train begins in the press shop, where 2,600 tons of steel are processed every day. Rene Busch accelerates the electric car without making a sound, with the wind blowing in his face. The visitor’s train stops at a large oven. “Here is where the steel is gradually heated to 950 degrees and modeled while it’s still warm. This provides the vehicle body components with an extra high level of stability and offers excellent protection when accidents occur. Plus, they are very light weight,” explains Busch. But not every component receives this special heat treatment. That’s why the mighty presses are busy doing their job not far away, where they exert an impressive amount of pressure to shape the cold steel into the desired form. The entire press shop manufactures 420,000 vehicle body components every day by means of warm or cold shaping processes.

Fascinating insight into more than 40 locations

In 2017, the Wolfsburg plant produced more than 800,000 cars, using these vehicle body components, thus enabling all the Volkswagen Group brands to deliver more than 10.7 million vehicles to their customers. Moreover, not only at the main plant do guests have the opportunity to see how these vehicles are manufactured. An upward of 1.3 million people per year visit Volkswagen factories – and that’s just in Germany. Guests have access to roughly 40 sites throughout the world. Whether Lamborghini in Bologna, Škoda in Mladá Boleslav or Bentley in Crewe – all of them offer a look behind the scenes. In Södertälje near Stockholm, Scania not only showcases current trucks, but also the company’s vision of how goods can be transported in a sustainable manner. And in Olifantsfontein near Johannesburg, MAN provides insight into modern bus construction in South Africa.

The last station: Visitors look over a rail at a long row of new vehicles that are currently undergoing the final quality tests. “I’d be happy to take one home, if you have any extras,” jokes one of the visitors. Unfortunately, that’s not an option, because Busch naturally is not allowed to make an exception – even for thrilled motorsport enthusiasts. A final farewell photo and then it’s time for the group to head back home.

Special tour highlights digitalization and electromobility

Rene Busch and his colleagues accompany – or more precisely, drive – approximately 200,000 visitors a year through the plant in Wolfsburg. “A vast number of them are customers picking up their new cars.

In addition, we are also regularly visited by representatives from business, society and politics as well as specialists from the field,” says Giuseppe Lazzara, head of Guest Relations. There is also a tour specifically for visitors from kindergartens and schools entitled “Children discover Volkswagen”. Another special tour focusses on digitalization and electromobility. Most of the tours are conducted in German or English, but factory tours in Chinese are also not uncommon. “The international interest is growing,” says Lazzara. He also explains that this is the reason why the team of tour guides has also been construed in such a manner that it offers eight different languages, including Arabic and Swahili. We will continue to increase this repertoire in the future, notes Lazzara. “That is important for us: We speak the same language as our guests.”