Good news for Volkswagen: what’s happening with production

The factory in Bratislava stopped production for two days due to lack of parts.

Volkswagen Group has resumed production at its plant in Bratislava, Slovakia, after a two-day shutdown due to a shortage of chips and supply constraints caused by the war in Ukraine.

The outage affected all parts of production at Slovakia’s largest car factory on Monday and Tuesday, a company spokeswoman said.

“Production is back on track this morning,” VW said.

The VW Group is building the VW Touareg, Porsche Cayenne, Audi Q7 and Q8 SUVs, as well as the VW Up, Seat Mii and Skoda Citigo minivans.

The VW Group has so far returned quickly due to the shortage of parts caused by the war in Ukraine. He resumed production sooner than planned at his factory in Wolfsburg.

However, the car manufacturers’ factories in Zwickau and Dresden, which produce ID electric cars, will need more time to return to normal.

The ongoing crisis in Ukraine has disrupted some car assembly plants and forced companies to suspend deliveries to Russia, affecting virtually all carmakers in Europe.

Expansion plans

The Volkswagen Group’s planned battery cell factory in Spain will be located in Sagunto, on the outskirts of Valencia.

The plant will have about 3,000 employees and a production of 40 gigawatt hours (GWh) per year, VW announced.

It will produce next-generation unified cells from VW, the car’s chief technology officer Thomas Schmall said in a statement.

Construction will begin by the end of the year, and the plant will be ready to begin production in 2026, VW said.

The Spanish government launched a tender process last week to distribute about 3 billion euros to promote the production of electric vehicles, Volkswagen and its Spanish unit Seat were among the bidders.

VW says it plans to spend more than € 7 billion, along with external suppliers, on the Sagunto plant and start production of electric vehicles at the Seat plant outside Barcelona and the VW plant outside Pamplona.

VW has embarked on an ambitious plan to build six large battery plants across Europe, with an annual capacity of 240 GWh, as it aims to become the world leader in electric vehicles.

Sagunto will be the third largest battery cell factory VW plans to build in Europe by 2030.