Volkswagen’s dream of building an electric vehicle that can compete with Tesla is in jeopardy, as its flagship Project Trinity is now drifting off course.
The facility, which is a new $2.2 billion EV factory to manufacture Trinity electric vehicles, may now be in jeopardy. VW is starting to review whether a Trinity EV power plant is really needed
This bad news circulated after Manager Magazine, released an interview with VW CEO, Oliver Blume. Mr. Blume as reported in the magazine wants to cancel the new facility as part of its strategy to “clean up” the German car group.
Blume’s “clean-up” began with undoing a 1.9 billion euro investment in self-driving startup Argo, and it now wants to put models and platforms on hold for several years, the magazine said.
This creates a contradiction with VW’s initial mission in the world of electrification. It is possible that Project Trinity will be realized closer to the end of the decade rather than 2026 as originally planned.
FYI, Project Trinity is a $2.2 billion project and was the idea of āāthe former VW leader, Herbert Diess. He made it clear in a speech to management last year that automakers need to be more like Tesla, which built the Model Y in just 10 hours. For comparison, VW takes 30 hours at the Zwickau factory.
Naturally, Diess uses Elon Musk’s company as a benchmark. Tesla managed to record high car production in one quarter.
Noted, Tesla generated a record 343,800 EV in Q3 alone, while VW sold 366,400 pure electric vehicles between January and September (Q1-Q3).
