Audi Said Ready For First North America Plant

(Story courtesey of AutoObserver)--The Audi AG premium-vehicle unit of Germany’s Volkswagen Group has all but confirmed longstanding speculation it will build a new assembly plant in North America, according to a report today fromBloomberg. An Audi spokesperson in Europe said Audi’s plan to build an assembly plant in North America “is as good as certain,” the news service reported today.

Audi’s spokesperson did not give a definitive timeline or location for the plant, which also still needs to be approved by the company’s supervisory board, but said the decision would come well before 2015. One likely location for an Audi assembly plant would be on the grounds of the all-new VW Group assembly plant in Chattanooga, TN. Volkswagen has been open about its ability to quickly construct a second “mirror” facility at the site that effectively would double the new plant’s current capacity of 250,000 units. Reports from Europe also said Audi also could be planning to build engines and transmissions for its North America-made vehicles. The Volkswagen Passats currently built at the company’s Chattanooga site currently use engines built at a recently-expanded plant in Mexico.

On Demand Join this webinar to learn how companies of all sizes are adopting easy-to-use cobots to overcome the labor shortage, handle multi-shift operations, scale production on-the-fly, and solve many other challenges.

This session is crucial for businesses aiming to bridge the skill gap with easy-to-integrate technologies that can be seamlessly adopted into your quality workflows.