Electric Vehicles

VW factory produces last ever combustion engine car, shifts to EVs only

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A factory owned by Volkswagen in Germany’s “City of Cars,” Zwickau, has produced its last ever combustion engine vehicle, closing a 116-year chapter on fossil-fuelled cars and switching to electric vehicle production, only.

Volkswagen said in a statement late last week that the last model with a combustion engine left the assembly line on Friday at the Zwickau car factory – a seventh-generation Golf R Estate with 2.0-litre petrol engine in Oryx White Pearl Effect.

“From today on, only electric models of Volkswagen and in future also of the sister brands Audi and Seat will be produced in Zwickau,” the statement said.

This, in itself, is a big enough milestone for a factory that has operated since 1904 and turned out more than 6 million Volkswagen ICE cars since 1990. But the Zwickau factory will also mark the first time the car maker has switched a large car factory completely to electric mobility.

For this reason, the transformation will not be immediate, with a “conversion phase” taking place over several weeks of the European summer and a qualification program for all 8,000 of the plant’s employees that will see them complete around 20,500 days of training.

Once all of this is complete, the Zwickau factory is expected to start producing the first of its fully electric vehicles by the end of the year, including the ID.4 and possibly an SUV from the sister brand, Audi.

To read the full story on RenewEconomy’s electric vehicle dedicated site, The Driven, and for more EV news, please click here…

Sophie Vorrath

Sophie is editor of One Step Off The Grid and deputy editor of its sister site, Renew Economy. She is the co-host of the Solar Insiders Podcast. Sophie has been writing about clean energy for more than a decade.

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