Volkswagen will close its plant in China for the first time (2 photos)
The Volkswagen Group has decided to liquidate one of its Chinese plants, Handelsblatt writes, citing its own sources. The plant in Nanjing, where the VW Passat and Škoda Superb are currently produced for the local market, will be completely closed. The publication claims that this is the first such radical decision in Volkswagen's Chinese history. 
The plant has been operating since 2008 and has a design capacity of up to 360 thousand cars per year. Its liquidation is connected with the current situation on the Chinese market, sources say, only indirectly.
The Volkswagen Group plans to reorient its local line to electric traction and has already demonstrated several promising concepts at the Shanghai Auto Show. To launch serial production of new products, it is necessary to seriously modernize and reconfigure assembly plants. In the case of the plant in Nanjing, this turned out to be difficult and expensive. The fact is that the site is located in a densely populated area, which complicates both the work and the associated logistics.
Volkswagen believes that in this way they are only optimizing, and not reducing, their Chinese production capacity, since the assembly of models produced in Nanjing will be transferred to another plant 70 kilometers away. The plant will be completely shut down during the second half of 2025, and the territory on which it is located will be transferred to local authorities. According to some reports, a residential complex and a park will appear here. However, the publication still saw in what is happening a sign of the aggravation of problems of foreign and local manufacturers in the Chinese market.
