VW could build an SUV in its U.S. plant of Chattanooga
- Volkswagen plans to start the production of a recreational vehicle at its U.S. plant in Chattanooga (Tennessee) towards 2016. Let us recall that the United States is an important market for recreational vehicles.
- Not to mention, General Motors, Ford and Chrysler, which traditionally produce such vehicles in the country, Asian and German carmakers will also make this type of models. Thus, BMW will produces the X3, X4, X5 and X6, while Mercedes will makes the ML, GL and R (and soon MLC).
- For now, Volkswagen has not revealed the name of the recreational vehicle that will be manufactured in Chattanooga. It may therefore be the future Tiguan, the future Touareg or an intermediate model between the Tiguan and Touareg.
- The Volkswagen plant in Mexico (Puebla) is also bidding to host the future production of this compact recreational vehicle, but for the moment Chattanooga seems to be preferred by the German group, in particular for reasons of available capacity (the Puebla plant is reaching saturation).
- Let us recall that the Chattanooga plant is currently producing a U.S. version of the Passat that exists nowhere else. Volkswagen produced 157,000 vehicles on this site in 2011, 177,000 in 2012 and 109,000 in the first eight months of 2013, with a capacity of about 170,000 units per year.
