Chattanooga, TN, has been selected, once more, as the site for VW’s future plant where it will begin producing EVs for North America in 2022.
Tennessee has hit another jackpot, this time to the tune of an $800 million investment from VW. So far, Volkswagen’s invested somewhere in the vicinity of $2.3 billion in Tennessee. The German giant plans to build another assembly plant in Chattanooga where future electric vehicles based on their modular electric toolkit chassis, known as MEB, will be assembled for the North American market.
The current plant opened in 2011 and employs over 3,500 workers. Thousands more have jobs at suppliers that feed the assembly plant. The new facility is expected to create an extra 1,000 highly qualified jobs not to mention further developing relationships with other businesses and suppliers in the surrounding area.
At the moment, Chattanooga churns out the Atlas and the Passat. Shortly, the 5-seater Atlas Cross Sport will join the other two. As of 2022, the new plant will assemble the compact I.D. Crozz crossover and the I.D. Buzz Microbus.
These steps are part of Volkswagen’s $50 billion worldwide EV plans to be carried out through to 2023. The 2020 I.D. Crozz, coming next year, and Buzz are only two of four EVs slated for the North American market in the next few years. By 2022, VW expects to have as many as 27 battery-electric models and no sooner than 2025, they intend to have sold over 1 million of them across the Globe.
Investing in electric vehicles – and America. #NAIAS #NAIAS2019 #DetroitAutoShow #VWID pic.twitter.com/kwj8BRPjYN
— Volkswagen USA (@VW) January 14, 2019
[…] based on this MEB platform is a good indication of its arrival in North America. Not only has the Chattanooga, Tennessee, the plant already been identified as the location of the brand’s future electric vehicles […]