Motoring: Giga-casting and robots: How Volkswagen’s Trinity aims to catch up with Tesla – Gulf Digital News

Motoring: Giga-casting and robots: How Volkswagen’s Trinity aims to catch up with Tesla – Gulf Digital News

BERLIN: As Tesla kicks off production at its new German plant this month, Volkswagen is weeks away from finalising plans for a 2 billion euro ($2.2 billion) electric vehicle (EV) factory that it hopes will bring it up to speed with its US rival.

Tesla says it can already churn out a Model Y in 10 hours at its new Giga Berlin-Brandenburg factory in Gruenheide near the German capital, whereas it can take Volkswagen three times as long to make its ID.3 electric car.

The German auto giant now aims to slash production times with its "Trinity" EV plant, which should be up and running in 2026, by using techniques such as large die casting and cutting the number of components in its cars by several hundred.

"Our goal is clear: we want to set the standard with our production," Volkswagen brand production chief Christian Vollmer told Reuters in an interview. "If we can get to 10 hours, we have achieved something big."

The carmaker has been improving productivity at a rate of about 5% a year but must take bigger leaps to keep its upper hand in the European market, Vollmer said, without providing a new percentage target.

Volkswagen, the world's second-biggest carmaker behind