Industrial - August 17, 2020
Volkswagen to convert Tenn. plant to EV development hub
Volkswagen announced Aug. 12 their plan to turn their Chattanooga factory into a North American center for electric vehicle manufacturing and engineering.
The Engineering and Planning Center at the Tennessee plant will soon receive a high-voltage laboratory that is designed to develop and test electric vehicle cells and battery packs.
The lab is planned to feature equipment like pressure testers, explosion-rated climate changers and a custom multi-axis shaker table (MAST) to test the integrity of vehicle components. Volkswagen said that this location will be the second in the country to have a MAST of this size.
“There are two ways that auto companies approach the development of electric vehicle batteries,” Wolfgang Maluche, Vice President of Engineering at Volkswagen of America, said in a statement. “A lot of them will farm out the development and testing of batteries to another company, and some will actually do the work of developing and testing in-house. We are doing the latter.”
Volkswagen plans for this new facility to be built to LEED standards. The lab is expected to go under construction soon and be fully operational by spring 2021.
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