Volkswagen of America is in the pilot build phase of the $850 million expansion of its massive Chattanooga Assembly complex, where it will by mid-2022 begin producing localized versions of the ID4 electric compact crossover, in tandem with the internal combustion engine-powered unibody Atlas and Atlas Cross Sport crossovers it already builds.
Charging up Chattanooga
VW's massive Tennessee complex will by mid-2022 begin producing localized versions of the ID4 electric compact crossover.
LARRY P. VELLEQUETTE
Barrels containing welding materials feed into a clean room where the Volkswagen ID4’s battery trays will be assembled robotically.
LARRY P. VELLEQUETTE
Battery Shop Manager Timothy Lovvorn explains how the plant will eventually be able to produce up to 30 battery packs per hour.
LARRY P. VELLEQUETTE
A buck shows what the ID4 body should look like after the second stage of its assembly, with wheel wells and A-pillars.
The highly automated EV factory will take batteries from a plant across the state line in Georgia and transform them into either 82-kilowatt-hour or 64-kWh sealed battery packs, which will eventually be mated — at least initially — to ID4 bodies. The flexible plant will ultimately be capable of producing up to eight different electric vehicles at a rate of several hundred per shift, plant officials say.
LARRY P. VELLEQUETTE
A nearly completed body of a pilot ID4 in the plant’s 565,000-square-foot body shop
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