Frankfurt – German automaker Volkswagen AG, said on Friday that it was ahead of schedule in producing electric cars.
The company which announced new overall plans to produce 1.5 million electric cars by 2025, said that the previous strategic target of one million electric cars was expected to be reached by the end of 2023, two years earlier than anticipated.
In September, at the Frankfurt Motor Show, Volkswagen unveiled the new all-electric ID.3 model and promised to become a world market leader in e-mobility.
The company said that over 37,000 customers had already reserved an ID.3 and paid a pre-booking deposit, adding that the model was expected to appear on the market from summer 2020.
The new production target showed that people want climate-friendly individual mobility and the company was ready to make it affordable for millions of people.
Thomas Ulbrich, member of the Volkswagen brand Board of Management responsible for e-mobility, said that the company was investing 33 billion euros (or 36.8 billion U.S. dollars) in e-mobility throughout the group by 2024.
According to the company, production of the ID.3 model started in November at the company’s Zwickau plant in Germany.
From 2021, up to 330,000 electric vehicles (EV) will leave the assembly line each year.
It said that that would make Zwickau the largest and most efficient EV factory in Europe.
Meanwhile, preparations for the production of its ID. EV models were already underway in China and the U.S. and pre-production already started at the Anting plant in Shanghai.
(Xinhua/NAN)