Volkswagen in EV Push
Germany car giant Volkswagen said Monday it would set up six battery factories in Europe by 2030 as it ramps up its shift into electric vehicles.
We are "planning to operate six gigafactories on our own and in collaboration with partners," said CEO Herbert Diess of the plants, which the group said would have have a total capacity of 240 Gigawatt hours.
The group also announced plans to significantly expand charging stations in coming years.
"We will multiply the number of fast charging points in Europe by a factor of five over the next four years," said Diess.
Cooperation deals have been agreed with Britain's BP, Spain's Iberdrola and Italy's Enel, VW said.
The charging stations set up in conjunction with partners are aimed at covering a third of European e-mobility demand by 2025.
Volkswagen group, which includes brands from Audi to Seat to Porsche, has ploughed more than 30 billion euros ($36 billion) into e-mobility in order to comply with stricter environmental rules in the EU.
Its eponymous flagship brand said in March that it was aiming for electric vehicles to account for 70 percent of its European sales by 2030.
The VW brand also said it would launch at least one new battery-powered model each year between now and 2030.
VW's all-electric ID.3 became the second best-selling car in Europe last December, and the brand has US e-mobility pioneer Tesla in its sights with its 2021 ID.4 SUV model.
Tesla has upped the pressure on major German carmakers such as Volkswagen in recent years with its plans to open a manufacturing plant outside Berlin next July.
AI is the Neat Handwriting of the Illiterate
A model in the hands of someone who has read the filing and walked the plant is a clerk. The same model, speaking for someone who has done neither, is a disguise. On AI slop, phantom citations and factslop, why finish stopped being evidence of work, and the containment layer KXCO built so a machine cannot speak as the institution until a source is attached.
Worthship: Do Not Conform to the Age
Worthship is the older English word for worship, and it means to ascribe worth. Bishop Robert Barron preached Romans 12 on 30 August. This essay follows the text into the prison letters, and puts two questions to a graph: do the four readings of that Sunday agree, and was Paul free or in chains when he wrote about despair?
The Truth in All Its Ugliness Must Survive
A majority vote does not determine the truth. Consensus is a mood, gossip is a sport, and a model will write the pretty version for free. Why the ugly number has to survive, why a record beats a dashboard, and what KXCO was built to keep standing when the room changes its mind.
Don't Be the Best, Be the Only: Winning in an AI World
AI is repricing competence downward. What it cannot reproduce is a life. The case for remaining non-fungible, why friction still produces the best ideas, and what it means to build AI systems that keep the human intellect in them.
Every story, signed and delivered.
Subscribe to the kxco channel and get the headline, the AI-written key takeaways, and the chain-anchor link the moment we publish. Audio versions and per-ticker subscriptions arrive in the next iteration.