Volkswagen has never threatened to delay or scrap its planned Chattanooga plant expansion, but it wouldn’t have been a total shock if the company had made such a decision.
The automobile manufacturer, after all, is looking at having to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to retrofit diesel models made in the last half decade with equipment that fixesVW’s emissions cheating software, to buck up its image in the wake of the scandal, and to pay fines and lawsuit settlements that result from the emissions debacle.
Volkswagen conservatively might have said it was delaying its expansion a year or 18 months to concentrate on the car repairs and remaking its image, but company officials said at the International Auto Show in Detroit on Monday that its $900 million factory expansion in Chattanooga was on track, and the start of assembly of the midsize, seven-seat SUV – tentatively called the CrossBlue – would begin later this year.
In publicly recommitting to previously announced plans, Herbert Diess, head of the automaker’s Volkswagen brand worldwide, not only said he stood “firmly behind our Chattanooga plant” but also hinted there would be more growth to come.
“We need more innovation, higher quality and better design,” he said.