From the diesel fraudsters to pioneer for sustainable mobility: This is the ambitious goal of the Volkswagen group. The E-cars will be produced also in a climate-neutral. How is this going to go?
Sometimes you have to pinch still, if Volkswagen’s managers that “global warming is in full swing, and VW is part of the problem.” The talks, Ralf Pfitzner, in the VW group, for the issue of sustainability is responsible. Still a sentence: “The I. D. the first accounting in a climate-neutral series produced car of the group.” Says this on a VW in the “Gläserne Manufaktur” in Dresden-organized Symposium, Thomas Ulbrich, Volkswagen brand Board of management for E-mobility.
It’s no four years, that the consolidated financial fraud by the Exhaust gas, and the resulting billions in fines is caught in an existential crisis. Until today this has worked in court only in the United States. The major processes in Germany have not even started.
Herbert Diess, the new strong man in Wolfsburg, has prescribed the group, a “change of culture”. “We are the company clean mobility”, so the default of This to the 650,000 employees is the world-wide. To achieve this, the group plans, according to a report of the “mirror” also the introduction of an internal CO2 tax, to provide incentives to reduce CO2 emissions.
By 2050 climate-neutral company
By 2050, the target, Volkswagen aims to reduce the CO2 emissions of its vehicle fleet towards Zero, also the car will be produced in a climate-neutral. In the process, greenhouse gas emissions would be offset by climate protection measures.
“If we want to achieve this goal, then the changes must begin now,” says Christian Senger, for the series of e-mobility is responsible.
Eleven billion euros, VW takes until 2023 in the Hand for the digitization of vehicles and stations, as well as a CO2-neutral production to the suppliers. Nine out of those eleven billion are direct investments in electric mobility.
Audio 04:31 listen live Now 04:31 Min.
Interview with Christian Senger, head of the Volkswagen-series e-Mobility
Currently, the first VW will be rebuilt-works in operation In Zwickau (Saxony), where he currently runs the conventional Gulf of the tapes, ID from the end of this year. be produced. He is to be the nucleus of a whole electric family.
Zwickau serves as a laboratory: The factory has already been trimmed in recent years on energy efficiency. In the case of a production increase of three percent in the past eight years, and CO2 emissions reduced-emissions by 66 percent. And there should not be anything: Liendel Chang, who takes care of the environmental aspects of production processes, says it’ll take “really everything under the magnifying glass”: For example, the efficiency of the ventilation and heating of the Assembly halls or the compressed air supply to the Assembly lines: “Since only ten percent of energy to come so far at all.”
Prototype: the vehicles of the ID.-Series, the back of the ID., In mid-ID.Crozz, to the right ID.Buzz
From Zwickau in the world
Zwickau is supposed to be the pioneer, and then quickly, other works are to follow: Emden on the North sea coast, where there is currently a medium-sized car Passat is produced; Hannover, where the transporters will be made; Mlada Boleslav in the Czech Republic, where the sister brand Skoda comes from, finally, two plants in China and the US plant in Chattanooga (Tennessee).
At VW, they point to the fact that, in a first step, the energy supply to all plants of the group (and, that’s about 120) dates back to 37 per cent from renewable sources. But the production in the factories is only one side. It is more difficult for the suppliers. And VW has plenty: in the world of around 40,000.
But finally, you want to make the entire value-added chain in a sustainable way. And on a sustainable basis not only in terms of CO2 avoidance, but also in the compliance with social standards. However, this means the depth of interventions in complex processes. “Sustainable supply chains a ‘hygiene factor’,” says Marco Philippi, in the group for which procurement is responsible. The aim is to oblige the suppliers, sustainability. “Suppliers that do not meet our requirements, we will exclude.”
VW is investing 1.2 billion euros in its plant in Zwickau
Climate protection as a competitive issue
But of course this is only an announcement: Because, for example, the steel manufacturing is an extremely CO2-intensive process. And for sure will be able to VW, not just from its steel suppliers to disconnect. Similarly, the Problem lies with the manufacturers of battery cells. These basic elements of the batteries, VW buys for the most part in Poland, where electricity generation is predominantly based on coal. But, according to VW specs, the Polish suppliers would cover the energy for the cell production of green electricity.
On the way to a climate-neutral production so still a lot to do. But VW wants to be at the forefront, and where the sustainability objectives are not directly implemented, intends to invest the group, as a compensation in climate protection projects.
Support the group gets from Georg Kell, formerly the founder and Director of the UN Global Compact – an Initiative for sustainable management under the auspices of the United Nations – and today the Chairman of the sustainability Advisory Board from VW: “Only with the Decarbonisation of the production companies will have a chance for the future. This is the Central theme of the competition.”