With Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam at his side, Scott Keogh, CEO and president of Volkswagen Group of America, announced at the 2019 Detroit Auto Show that the automaker is investing $800 million into its assembly plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee, to build a new electric vehicle. The automaker says it will add 1,000 new jobs in Tennessee to support EV production.
“The shift toward electric vehicles is a trend that can be seen worldwide, and Volkswagen’s decision to locate its first North American EV manufacturing facility in Chattanooga underscores Tennessee’s manufacturing strength and highly-skilled workforce,” said Haslam. “We obviously think electric vehicles are going to play a more and more prominent role.”
The first electric vehicle to roll out the doors in Chattanooga will come in 2022, and it’ll be a production version of VW’s ID Crozz crossover. That car’s MEB platform will spawn several more electric vehicles, including one called the ID Buzz that will be inspired by VW’s much-loved vintage vans. MEB production is slated to begin before the end of 2019.
VW forecasts that it will sell 150,000 EVs worldwide by 2020, and it expects that number to grow dramatically in short order. By 2025, VW says it will build 1 million electric vehicles each year. China is currently the world’s largest market for EVs, followed by the United States.
In addition to Chattanooga, VW is building its first dedicated EV production facility in Zwickau, Germany. Volkswagen also plans EV-production at facilities in Anting and Foshan, in China, starting in 2020, and in the German cities of Emden and Hanover by 2022.
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