VW expands press shop for e-cars

Volkswagen has officially inaugurated the press shop expansion at its electric car plant in Zwickau, Kallanish learns from the carmaker.

The €74 million ($90m) invested in expanding the press shop represents one of the largest single investments in the course of transforming the site, VW notes. The heart of the expansion is the new XL press from Schuler. It weighs more than 1,000 tonnes and has a press force of 6,900 tonnes across five stages due to a particularly efficient drive mix of conventional and servomechanism technology, VW says.

In addition, an automatic stacking line and a high bay warehouse of 30 metres in height for logistics have been put into operation on the extra 8,400 square metres of space. From now on, all required outer skin body parts, such as doors and boot lids, can be pressed on site for the electric models.

Next to the parent plant in Wolfsburg, the Zwickau facility now has the second-largest press shop within the Volkswagen brand. Around 20 million parts per year have been produced on average in Zwickau in the past ten years. With the new XL press, this figure is set to increase to up to 30 million parts per year by the beginning of 2022.

Christian Koehl Germany