The German car manufacturer Volkswagen (XETRA: VOW.DE) has laid out an ambitious plan to dispute Tesla’s (NASDAQ: TSLA) leading role in the Electric Vehicle industry. The price of ordinary shares (VOW) of the vehicle multinational has risen over 11%, while the preferred shares (VOW3) rose by roughly 7%.
Volkswagen’s plans embrace an all-electric future of transportation. Therefore, the company wants to build six gigafactories for battery cells across Europe by 2030, enabling four to five million new EV’s per annum.
Moreover, VW will engage in the development of a new “unified cell” by 2023, to drive down production costs of batteries by building a single hardware platform across its multiple brands, including Porsche, Audi, and Skoda. The Scalable Systems Platform (SSP) is expected to improve scalability through standardization and drive down costs considerably.
VW has also ramped up its ambitions in the charging field with various strategic partnerships and joint ventures. The company plans to operate 18,000 charging points in Europe and 17,000 in China by 2025 while also expanding in North America.
Baird analyst Ben Kallo stated that “VW Power Day confirms EVs are set to become the standard,” while remaining bullish on Tesla. In an accelerated trend toward EV’s there is enough market space for both manufacturers to flourish.
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