VW Investing $2.2 Billion To Build 2026 Trinity At New Wolfsburg Plant

Volkswagen’s high-tech flagship has been teased several times already even though it won’t go on sale until 2026. It wasn’t even known where the EV would be built, until now as Wolfsburg has been chosen as the location. It won’t be assembled at the existing factory, but rather at a new plant for which construction is scheduled to begin in 2023.

There are many reasons for which Trinity is an important car not just for the VW core brand, but also for the entire Group. With the Passat-sized electric sedan, the German automotive conglomerate aims to cut production time to just 10 hours and match Tesla. Doing so will be possible by using fewer components as well as offering fewer configurations. In addition, the Trinity will be assembled using leaner production lines with more automation than ever before.

Trinity will also mark the debut for VW Group’s hugely promising SSP architecture that will eventually replace all existing EV platforms as well as those used by cars equipped with combustion engines. At the new factory in Wolfsburg, the company aims to make around 250,000 cars each year and these will be ready to meet level 4 autonomous driving criteria.

VW is promising a “much shorter charging time” compared to the current crop of EVs, along with a maximum range of over 435 miles (700 kilometers). The plant where Trinity will be assembled is going to be entirely carbon neutral and the car’s platform will go on to underpin over 40 million electric vehicles across the VW Group’s many brands.

It won’t have a traditional sedan body style as it will adopt a sleeker coupe-like silhouette in the same vein as the Arteon. Chances are VW is engineering the midsize Trinity as a more practical liftback rear instead of a regular trunk lid. Developing the EV and erecting the factory is going to cost approximately €2 billion, which works out to nearly $2.2 billion at current exchange rates.

When it does arrive in 2026, the VW Trinity will carry a starting price of around €35,000, according to a previous statement made by the core brand’s CEO Ralf Brandstätter. We also know it will do 0 to 62 mph (100 km/h) in less than five seconds and charge the battery from 5% to 80% in as little as nine minutes.

Before the production version is unveiled, VW is expected to introduce a concept car, likely the one we’ve been seeing in these teaser images.

Source: Volkswagen