EV production: dedicated plants or established infrastructure?

Electric vehicles (EVs) may be gaining ground but overall volumes remain tiny, posing a significant challenge to production planning. Most mainstream players aren't yet ready to set up a dedicated plant, as the financial investment - and the risk - are generally deemed too high.

"It would be best to take a greenfield approach in a certain timeframe, but that is very dependent on the scale of production," explained Stefan Bratzel, Director of the Center of Automotive Management (CAM). "A company needs to have at least 150,000 EVs to merit a dedicated EV production facility."

For many brands, the most practical solution is to take advantage of established production infrastructure and simply build EV models alongside traditional internal combustion engine (ICE) ones. "There are pros and cons to both options for producing EVs," Anna-Marie Baisden, Head of Autos Research at BMI Research, told Automotive World.