Batteries for EV Audi – Assembly plant to be built in Mexico
With the first assembly factory for electric car batteries outside Germany, Audi continues to rely on Mexico – despite tariff threats from Donald Trump.
The German car manufacturer Audi has started building the first assembly hall for batteries for electric cars at its San José Chiapa plant in the Mexican state of Puebla. This is reported by various Mexican media. The plant will be the Audi Group’s first battery factory outside of Germany. It is an important step in Audi’s efforts to expand electromobility. The company has not yet provided any information about the amount of investment or the production capacity of the new plant.
The factory will cover an area of 33,600 square meters plus a 5,600 square meter penthouse and will be built in a sustainable manner. During the day, the building will be lit only by sunlight, writes the weekly newspaper Newsweek . Heat recovery will keep the facility at optimal temperatures so that no gas needs to be used for heating.
Audi México will employ 350 people in battery production.
The Mexican business newspaper El Financiero quotes from an Audi communiqué,
This team will focus on production and administrative tasks, quality assurance, analysis and planning, and monitoring the production process,
In June, Audi México announced that it would invest one billion euros in its plant in the state of Puebla to produce vehicles with e-tron technology, i.e. hybrid and electric vehicles.
Mexico as an important location for car companies
Mexico, and Puebla in particular, is an important location for German car manufacturers. The Volkswagen Group operates one of its largest factories in the world here, with around 10,000 employees; the Audi plant in San José Chiapa employs more than 5,000 people. Numerous international car manufacturers have set up assembly plants in Mexico to assemble vehicles there and then sell them duty-free across the border to the USA. Mexico, along with the USA and Canada, is part of the North American Free Trade Agreement USMCA (successor to NAFTA), which is, however, being questioned by the newly elected US President Donald Trump.
Trump is threatening neighboring countries Canada and Mexico with import tariffs of 25 percent if they do not take action against migrants and drug smuggling. Such a step would also affect German car companies. BMW plans to assemble New Class electric vehicles at its plant in San Luis Potosí in northern Mexico from 2027. In order to integrate the plant into BMW’s global network for electromobility, 800 million euros are to be invested over the next few years .
The real target of Trump’s threat, however, is likely to be Chinese car companies that are setting up shop in Mexico in order to target the US market from there. The Chinese commercial vehicle giant Dongfeng is planning to open a new plant in Mexico by 2025. And the world’s largest manufacturer of electric cars, BYD,
is pushing ahead with its plans to open a factory in Mexico . In contrast, Tesla boss and Trump friend Elon Musk announced in the summer
that construction of the planned Tesla gigafactory in northern Mexico would be halted . Musk said he would decide after the presidential elections in the USA whether the project would continue. The decision is still pending.
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Batteries for EV Audi – Assembly plant to be built in Mexico, source
