Volkswagen Trinity to be built at new $3 billion factory

The 2026 Volkswagen ‘Trinity’ flagship electric vehicle will spearhead the next generation of VW EVs to be built from a $A2.94 billion plant located at the car-maker’s home in Wolfsburg, Germany.

Volkswagen detailed the plans for the next “milestone in its transformation journey” over the weekend, confirming its supervisory board has signed off on the project, with work to begin around March 2023.

The new Trinity factory will be located in the Warmenau district of Wolfsburg and is claimed to meet high environmental standards and the most innovative manufacturing methods.

Its first product, the Volkswagen Trinity, is expected to emerge from the production line in 2026.

“The new facility with its optimised processes will therefore become a model for the gradual transformation of production at the main Wolfsburg plant along with all other Volkswagen manufacturing sites worldwide,” Volkswagen said in a release.

Officials have heralded the announcement as a massive win for German manufacturing; specifically, extending Volkswagen’s heritage in the German region of lower Saxony.

The new Trinity base is also set to facilitate the development of VW’s next-generation e-mobility plans: from a new electric platform to software applications and ‘ground-breaking’ driver assistance systems.

Volkswagen says the plant will also enable it to “making autonomous driving available to many people by 2030”.

“The Trinity project is the new lodestar for Volkswagen’s all-electric fleet and the crystallisation point for the brand’s ACCELERATE strategy,” says Volkswagen.

The German car-maker says its next generation of EVs will be net carbon-neutral and feature much shorter charging times, a range of over 700km, the Group’s state-of-the-art software and Level 4 autonomous driving capability.

It has previously said the Trinity will be as quick to charge as it takes to refuel a conventional combustion car, thanks to next-generation battery chemistry.

“The foundation is the Group’s new SSP platform. Over its lifetime, more than 40 million vehicles are projected on this basis. The platform debuts in the volume segment with Trinity.”

Moreover, the new plant intends to set new timing benchmarks for manufacturing, according to Volkswagen, which has plans for a production time of just 10 hours per vehicle.

“The key: Fewer variants, fewer components, more automation, leaner production lines and new logistic concepts,” the car-maker said.

Volkswagen board member Christian Vollmer said innovative and sustainable manufacturing concepts would be central to the new facility.

“Trinity stands for a completely new kind of thinking, production, collaboration,” he said.

“It takes courage to shape the future. This is how Wolfsburg will become the yardstick for innovative production concepts – for Volkswagen and the entire industry.”

Volkswagen will push into the next phase of its electric strategy next year when production of the ID.3 hatch, which has been in production at Zwikau since 2019, begins in Wolfsburg’s main facility.

Available to Europeans since September 2020, the ID.3 was the first of several new-generation VW EVs based on the company’s MEB dedicated electric platform, but none of them have yet been confirmed for Australia.

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