Battery test center in Chattanooga Volkswagen electric offensive on the US market

When the door wings of the climatic chamber swing open, there is a chill in the hall. The emerging fog is icy, in extreme cases it has a temperature of -70 degrees Celsius. But there is more – the chamber can generate heat of up to 130 degrees, and a wide range of humidity settings are possible. The climatic chamber is an important element of the new battery engineering lab recently opened by Volkswagen of America.

It was a very special moment for Wolfgang Maluche, Vice President of Engineering at Volkswagen of America. “When our CEO Scott Keogh gave his speech I shut my eyes for a moment and just felt joy,” said the engineer who moved to Chattanooga from Germany in 2018, where he set up the testing centre. “And my employees probably had a similar experience. I’m incredibly proud of the team and their performance.”

The new lab is an important building block in Volkswagen’s global network of battery testing centres – there are similar facilities in Germany and China, and the processes and requirements are aligned globally. Coordinating closely with their colleagues, experts are now also testing battery systems in Chattanooga for the challenges that will arise when the ID. models are in use. These include bumpy roads, heat, cold, humid air, powdery dust, water and electrical load.

The batteries are subjected to particularly high levels of stress by a vibrating table that weighs two tons and rests on a concrete foundation weighing 270 tons. “The table simulates the journey using various route profiles. It can generate forces up to 25 times that of gravity, almost like a minor earthquake,” explains Maluche. “One run lasts 14 minutes, during which the battery is discharged and charged with high power.”

The lab, which has started out with 30 employees, is right next to the Volkswagen plant and has a surface area of around 3,000 square metres, making it approximately the same size as half a football pitch. The electricity that is released by the various high-tech testing facilities during testing can be used to power the building. Anything left over is fed into the public power grid.

Volkswagen has invested 22 million US dollars in the battery engineering lab in Chattanooga. The high-tech test centre symbolises the corporations’ transformation in North America. The region – Canada, Mexico and the United States – is becoming a powerhouse for the electrification strategy. In addition to the lab in Chattanooga, there is the centre of excellence for cell technology. The facility in California collaborates with the American start-ups QuantumScape and 24M, who are already working on the next generation of cells (solid state and semi-solid technology). Testing for the new cell technologies will then also be able to be carried out in the new high-voltage lab in Chattanooga.

On top of testing, production will soon be starting in the USA. Production of the ID.4[1] will start in Chattanooga in late summer 2022, seeing the car take another step towards becoming a world car. After being launched in spring 2021, the electric SUV soon became a successful model: in Q1 of 2022 alone, Volkswagen delivered more than 30,000 vehicles of this type – meaning that every other all-electric Volkswagen car sold is an ID.4.

Volkswagen is investing around 800 million dollars in electrifying the Chattanooga plant – increasing the importance of the factory as a regional economic factor as well. More than 4,000 people work at the site currently. Volkswagen also plans to hire an additional 1,000 workers, to keep up with the demand for the SUV models Atlas and Atlas Cross Sport, as well as the ID.4, more than 75 percent of which is made up of parts that come from North American suppliers. And production and purchasing are not the only areas in which Volkswagen is relying on American expertise more heavily than ever before, the same is also true in development.

With its e-offensive, Volkswagen will energise the market in North America, which has entered a rapid growth phase. The ID.4 is the first model based on the modular electric drive matrix (MEB) for the American market.

By 2027, the Volkswagen brand alone aims to make 7.1 billion US dollars available for their electric and digital transformation in North America. The plan is for US customers of the Volkswagen Group to have more than 25 all-electric models to choose from in 2030, with the target of 55 percent of all Volkswagens sold being e-models.

The Volkswagen Group is targeting a 10 percent market share in the USA. A strong pillar of the strategy is the swift expansion of Electrify America’s high-performance charging network. In February 2022, the Volkswagen subsidiary was operating more than 800 charging stations with 3,500 DC charging points. This volume is expected to more than double by 2026.