Volkswagen plans to establish own battery factory

Germany: Volkswagen, the leading auto maker is planning on building their own battery production unit in Salzgitter, Germany. The decision of Volkswagen in foraying into the production of e-batteries is primarily to foster e-mobility in automobiles.

It is believed that the company’s management in order to overcome its dependency on Asian producers for batteries have come up with this decision for manufacturing e-car batteries on their own.

The car maker further indicated that their main focus would be on producing more proficient battery cells which will revolutionise the global electric vehicle market in the coming years. The company aims to become the world leader in e-mobility technology by 2018.

The factory is expected to start in company’s plant located in Salzgitter, Germany which is currently manufacturing conventional combustion engines. A company official claims that with due course of time the demand for these engines is anticipated to decline and therefore company needs to find an alternative in order to sustain in future.

According to a recent report published by TechSci Research, “Global Automotive Battery Market Forecast and Opportunities, 2019’’ the global automotive battery market is forecast to surpass USD42.6 billion by 2019. In value terms, the passenger car battery market is the most dominant automotive battery segment, followed by commercial vehicle, two-wheeler, three-wheeler and OTR battery segments. Due to large fleet size and increasing penetration of passenger cars, predominantly in developing countries, the passenger car battery market is expected to continue its dominance in the global automotive battery market during the forecast period as well. Asia-Pacific is the most dominant region for the global automotive battery market. This market dominance can be attributed to the region’s huge and expanding two-wheeler and passenger car fleet, especially in China, Japan and India.

As per TechSci Research, the decision of the Europe’s largest car manufacturer to innovate and diverse their operations by setting up a battery production facility is expected to give an edge over the competitors by having OEM tie ups for batteries with other leading electric vehicle manufacturers consequently facilitating the company to capture a significant market share in the automotive battery market globally.