√Volkswagen Trinity flagship electric vehicle delayed to 2028

An internal review over a planned German factory has put the brakes on the launch of Volkswagen’s next-generation “premium” electric vehicle.

An internal review of Volkswagen’s plans to construct a $200 million ($A310 million) factory at its Wolfsburg base in Germany has led to a delay in the introduction of the company’s planned flagship electric vehicle: Project Trinity, as it is known.

Announced last year, Project Trinity was initially scheduled for a 2026 launch, and claimed to travel further, charge faster (as quickly as refuelling) and offer more advanced autonomous driving technology than any Volkswagen before it.

Construction of the factory – conceived around new production processes aimed at providing significant increases in efficiency over Volkswagen’s existing plants – was set to begin in the European spring of 2023 (our autumn), having been approved by Volkswagen board members earlier this year, with a view towards a start to production in 2026.

Former Volkswagen CEO Herbert Diess claimed the production model being developed under the title of Project Trinity had been conceived around a modular production process that would allow it to be produced in 10 hours.

Volkswagen’s aim with the new factory was to match the production efficiency claimed by Tesla for its newly-established German plant on the outskirts of Berlin.

But speaking to Drive at the 2022 Los Angeles motor show, new VW CEO Thomas Schäfer confirmed an internal review of the company’s future model line-up and production capacity has allowed Project Trinity to be produced at an existing factory, negating the need for the $200 million ($AU310 million) outlay on the new plant.

“By the time we were planning to bring the car in the middle of 2026, the factory at Wolfsburg was chock-a-block. So we had to make a plan for another factory close by, run it up, clean up the rest, and then reintegrate as much as we can into the old factory,” he said.

Schäfer revealed an internal review into Volkswagen’s production capacity and future model strategy under a new management structure has delayed Project Trinity to at least 2028.

By this time, Volkswagen believes production of existing petrol-engined models would be reduced to the point where the new electric car could conceivably be produced in an existing factory.

“We’re not 100 percent sure what comes when,” Schäfer told Drive. “But what we know is that everything slides back a bit by, say, two years – on the Trinity side, specifically.

“That allows us, potentially, to integrate the vehicle into the factory, because by then the [petrol and diesel vehicle] volume in the [existing] factory will reduce, and we won’t have a problem that it’s too full to integrate another car.”

Schäfer was speaking to journalists after an official statement quoting him and new Volkswagen Group CEO Oliver Blume was released in response to a report published Germany’s Manager Magazin, which claimed the planned new Wolfsburg-based factory was being delayed from 2026 to 2030 as part of wider plans to restructure VW’s operations.

“We’re currently taking the opportunity to look at all projects and investments and their viability,” said the Volkswagen statement attributed to Schäfer and Blume.

Further reviews at Volkswagen are centred around the company’s Cariad software division, according to Schäfer – delays at which have led to the market launch of Porsche’s upcoming electric Macan being pushed back a year, to 2024.

The Trinity delay comes weeks after Ford and Volkswagen’s Argo AI autonomous driving business Argo AI was shut down, contributing to a loss for Ford of $AU1.28 billion.

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