VW EV production ramps up for new ID.4 in Chattanooga

Chattanooga, Tennessee, is the home of one of the United States’ pioneering speed shops as first opened by Honest Charley Card. It’s currently the site of a very welcoming and well-attended concours for vintage automobiles. And between all this, it’s become the home of a cutting-edge assembly plant where Volkswagen builds a variety of vehicles in this country. This week, that number of Chattanooga-born Volkswagens was boosted with a new model, as the first domestic production version of the new all-electric ID.4 exited the line. As Volkswagen of America makes clear, this pioneering ID.4 is going to be joined by a lot of company very soon.

Initially, the ID.4 will be built and sold as a rear-drive vehicle or with all-wheel drive with 82 kWh battery capacity. Volkswagen says the first customer cars will reach showrooms from Chattanooga in October, with production ramping up to 7,000 units monthly in the fourth quarter of 2022. To this end, Volkswagen is in the process of hiring 1,000 new assembly techs to staff the ID.4 line in Chattanooga. Production is expected to escalate still further as 2023 unfolds. Up next for Volkswagen: the 2024 debut of the ID.Buzz, the all-electric reinterpretation of the fabled Samba microbus.