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november 13, 2018 - Porsche

A New Era

The history of the Zuffenhausen site began eighty years ago when the company known as Dr. Ing. h.c. F. #Porsche KG moved from the center of Stuttgart to the northern district. The company wrote #automotive history right from the start: the 0 series of what would become the VW Beetle was made in Zuffenhausen, as were three Type 64 race coupes in the year 1939. From 1950 the first sports cars of the #Porsche brand were made on the factory grounds—starting with the legendary 356 and followed by the #911 in 1964. The company’s historical headquarters are now at the threshold of a new era. A factory within the factory is being built for #taycan production. From 2019 the sports-car maker will manufacture not only its current two-door vehicles but also its first standard-series car with a fully electric drive. More than 1,200 new jobs are being created. #Porsche is investing around €700 million in Zuffenhausen alone.

Tens of thousands of metric tons of steel have gone into making the new body shop, paint shop, and conveyor bridge as well as the halls for assembly and logistics, electric drive, and axle production. That’s roughly the amount needed to make one hundred thousand #911 Carrera bodies. Some twenty-eight thousand truckloads of earth have been excavated at the site. And 112,000 cubic meters of concrete have been delivered. Nearly three hundred planners and as many as three thousand plant and construction experts have been involved in transporting this enormous amount of material through Stuttgart’s dense traffic and in using it at the current construction sites. The deliveries include concrete columns that can weigh up to one hundred metric tons. In short, there’s a lot going on in these weeks and months in Zuffenhausen.

Creative ways of stretching space

“The heart of #Porsche beats in Zuffenhausen,” says Reiner Luth, head planner for the factory project. Series production continues—without any interruptions or delays—right next to the buildings under construction. Luth draws a medical analogy to describe the work that’ll enable the #taycan to roll from Zuffenhausen’s production lines. “We’re basically doing open-heart surgery,” he says. Needless to say, this “procedure” poses a number of challenges.

The timetable alone is ambitious. In late 2015 #Porsche made the decision to produce the #taycan at its headquarters. The clock has been ticking ever since, with series production scheduled to start in 2019. But that’s not the only challenge. “The space here is already densely packed,” explains Jürgen King, head of central construction management. He’s coordinating the project for #Porsche. “For us to do the construction work, five thousand employees had to move—in about half a year.”

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