ELECTRIVE — 2024-03-08
Automotive Industry
The car was to be the first electric model to be produced at the main plant in Wolfsburg. Volkswagen has now announced that it will continue to build the ID.3 exclusively in Saxony. Demand remains too low.
A Volkswagen spokesperson said as much on-site on Friday 8 March 2024. The ID.3 assembly starts at the main plant planned for summer 2024 and has been cancelled again.
“At the end of the day, every euro that we don’t have to spend counts,” said Christian Vollmer, Member of the Board of Management for Production, explaining the decision in an interview. “For this reason, we have decided to continue to bundle the volume of the ID.3 in Zwickau and to effectively utilise the already fully scaffolded site.”
VW already had to cancel shifts at its EV-only site in Saxony in late 2023, also quoting low demand. Last year (2023), Volkswagen delivered a total of 140,800 ID.3 cars. Cancelling additional production in Wolfsburg was, therefore good news for Zwickau, said Vollmer. However, the existing ID.3 assembly line in Dresden, where the car is also being built in small numbers, is unaffected, the spokesman added. Assembly there will continue.
Initially, Volkswagen reportedly envisioned the then-refreshed “new ID.3” for spring 2023. The updated model was to be built not only in Zwickau and Dresden but also at the main plant in Wolfsburg, Lower Saxony.