VW Power Day reveals plans for batteries and charging

A week ago, Volkswagen Group held a Power Day event, Volkswagen CEO Herbert Diess and Volkswagen Group Technical Management Committee member Thomas Schmall announced the Volkswagen Group’s battery and charging infrastructure.

A week ago, Volkswagen released a new "acceleration strategy", announcing that it will speed up the transformation of electrification again. It is planned that by 2030, the sales of pure electric vehicles in the European market will account for more than 70% of new car sales. The sales of pure electric vehicles accounted for more than 50%, which are double the previous plan.

Based on the new strategic goal, by 2025, Volkswagen’s annual battery demand in Europe and Asia is expected to exceed 150 kWh. Therefore, improving the level of battery technology and ensuring adequate battery supply are vital to Volkswagen.

It seems that the Volkswagen Group is ready for this. On March 15, Volkswagen Group held a Power Day event. Herbert Diess, Volkswagen CEO, and Thomas Schmall, a member of the Volkswagen Group’s Technical Management Committee and Volkswagen Group Parts CEO, disclosed the details of the battery and charging infrastructure strategy at the event.

The whole value chain drives battery production capacity and charging technology improvement

The Volkswagen Group stated that the purpose of the battery and charging technology roadmap is to significantly reduce the complexity and cost of batteries, so that electric vehicles can attract more users and become an affordable technology for as many groups as possible. To this end, the Volkswagen Group is focusing on ensuring battery supply beyond 2025. In Europe alone, it is expected that by 2030 the company will build 6 super battery plants with a total capacity of 240 GWh/year.

Thomas Schmall revealed at the event that the first two factories of the battery production plan will be located in Sweden. Among them, the Skellefte plant, which cooperates with Swedish lithium battery developer and manufacturer Northvolt and focuses on the production of high-end batteries, is expected to be in 2023. Put into commercial use, follow-up production capacity will be expanded to 40GWh/year.

In addition to battery production capacity, Thomas Schmall also looked forward to changes in battery technology at the press conference. It is expected that the public will launch a new Unified Premium Battery in 2023. According to the plan, this battery will be equipped in more than 80% of Volkswagen Group's models by 2030, and the new battery can be recycled and reused as high as 95%. It is expected that with the application of innovative production technology and continuous recycling and reuse, Volkswagen is expected to gradually increase the battery cost reduction of entry-level models to up to 50%, and mass-produced models can also see a reduction of up to 30% in battery costs.

It is reported that the Volkswagen Group’s first automotive power battery recycling pilot plant in the central German city of Salzgitter has been officially opened at the end of February. The plant’s goal is to create a closed-loop recycling management system that will protect valuable nickel, cobalt, manganese, etc. The long-term goal is to recycle more than 90% of raw materials.

In addition, Volkswagen will also actively promote the construction of a global public fast charging network. In Europe, it has signed cooperation agreements with the energy companies BP (Great Britain), Iberdrola (Spain) and Enel (Italy). It is estimated that by 2025, the Volkswagen Group will operate about 18,000 public fast charging stations in Europe, which is five times larger than today, which is equivalent to about one-third of the estimated total demand on the European continent in 2025.

At the same time, the Volkswagen Group also intends to use electric vehicles as part of the energy system and integrate electric vehicles into private, commercial and public energy systems in the future. The plan is expected to store the green power of the solar system in the car and feed it back to the home network when needed. Not only will users be more independent of the public grid, they will also save money and reduce CO2 emissions.

The Chinese market is still a top priority

In the era of fuel vehicles, China is the most important and largest single market for Volkswagen Group in the world. In the era of new energy vehicles, Volkswagen Group hopes to continue its outstanding performance in the Chinese market. Herbert Diess revealed that Volkswagen plans to sell 1.5 million NEVs in the Chinese market by 2025, covering Volkswagen, Skoda, Audi and JAC Volkswagen brands.

In order to achieve this goal, with the support of China's opening up policy, Volkswagen Group has just established two BEV joint ventures- Hefei Volkswagen Anhui and Changchun Audi FAW NEV Company. Plus the existing joint ventures, by 2025, the Volkswagen Group will produce and sell at least 15 MEB platform models in China.

In terms of charging, Volkswagen Group stated that it will use its joint venture company CAMS to deploy 500 charging stations and 6,000 charging piles in the Chinese market this year, covering 8 cities across the country. By 2025, 17,000 charging piles will be deployed, with charging power ranging from 120kW to 300kW, covering most cities.

Summary: Power batteries play a key role in the transformation of electrification. This time, Volkswagen Group displayed its battery and charging technology roadmap before 2030 on the Battery Day, demonstrating its leading level in the field of power batteries. As one of the most rapid transformation of traditional car companies to electrification, we expect Volkswagen Group to bring us more surprises in the future.