Yesterday one interesting article appeared on the regional site P4 Vest of the Swedish radio corporation.
It is known that Tesla is searching for a production facility in Europe to achieve their production targets of 500.000 cars in 2018.
Different countries seem to be in the list, Spain because of the Sun, the Netherlands, because Tesla has already an assembly facility there or Germany, because Tesla has lately agreed to buy a German manufacturing specialist.
But we also heard some voices coming from Finland saying that they could very well host that facility in the Vaasa/Vasa area as the largest lithium deposits are nearby in Kaustinen.
But I wouldn’t write about it if this was it all.
According to that article, a group including Business Sweden have been in talks with Tesla about the possibility to build Tesla cars in Sweden. There is no further information about that, but there are rumours, that haven’t been denied by anyone, that the factory in Trollhättan was put on the table as possible factory for the Tesla purposes in Europe.
This is at this point only very vague rumours that haven’t been confirmed nor denied by NEVS or Business Sweden mostly with the sentence:
We however, do not comment any ongoing discussions.
Please take all this with a grain of salt.
It is known, that NEVS is offering their production capabilities to other OEMs, but there is no information about any talks with anybody, so currently the first known utilisation of the factory will be the creation of the Bodies for the Chinese 9-3 that will be finished at the NEVS factory in Tianjin.
Maybe this doesn’t seem of interest for the SAAB fans, but without a prosper climate around Trollhättan things like the SAAB museum could disappear faster than you think, so at least it should be of interest of any SAAB fan to see that somebody is using that big industrial infrastructure.
I read somewhere in an interview with someone from Nevs that they plan to sell new 9-3 EV’s in Sweden mid 2017, is that true, or nobody knows yet?
Hi, to put it short. They have a contract in China, and they have to first deliver those cars. If they manage to ramp up production without problems and deliver those cars in time, they could try to sell that car in Sweden, and only in Sweden. On the other side the “next-gen” cars are meant to be distributed globally, although this doesn’t mean to enter all the markets at a time. But if you live in Sweden you’ll have a bigger chance to be able to buy one of those cars.
Smoke and mirrors…
Well, since NEVS don’t need any manufacturing capacity in Sweden and were going to abandon the plant at some point anyway…
What do you mean? I just watched a video(made in Nov 2016) with Mattias Bergman saying production will start in 2018 so I guess that answers my question, but they also say that production will start in China and then follow in Sweden. How do you know they will close the factory in Trollhättan?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zy_BDnMF3RY
Talk is cheap, and NEVS have done an awful lot of talking over the years. And whatever they say in public, common sense dictates that with a plant in China, there’s no longer need for one in Sweden, it’s cheaper to build everything in China. (Just look at Volvo, where production of the S90 flagship sedan will be moved to China, and the XC40 will be built in China and not in Europe. Many people said that would never happen, well, now it is…)
The video you linked to sounds like (as Donald would say) FAKE NEWS.
NEVS has been operating without any sales revenue for some time and even when revenues start it will be a while more before efficient production volume is achieved. Perhaps the controlled market in China guarantees them a profit from sales there, but it will be interesting to see how profitability plays out if they do actually enter global markets.