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Volkswagen’s Power Day: Six new cell plants, new unified battery cell, charging network partnerships
Earlier today, German automaker Volkswagen held its first-ever “Power Day” event. Similar to Tesla’s Battery Day, Volkswagen outlined its plans for reducing the cost of electric vehicles, how it will supply battery cells for its massive EV push, a new “unified” battery cell, and the how company’s charging network is being funded by BP and other European-based energy companies.
Batteries and Cell Production
Every company involved with electric vehicles knows that to reduce the cost of its cars, sourcing batteries is 9/10ths of the battle. Batteries make up a substantial portion of an electric vehicle’s overall cost. With increased battery production and purchasing, EV makers hold the ability to lower the cost of their vehicles overall. Tesla outlined this last September at its own battery-focused event.
Volkswagen’s roadmap isn’t much different than Tesla’s. The company plans to increase cell production in Europe by a substantial margin, developing six new cell factories that will be fully operational by 2030.
“Together with partners, we want to have a total of six cell factories up and running in Europe by 2030, thus guaranteeing security of supply,” Thomas Schmall, Member of the Board of Management of Volkswagen Group for Technology and CEO of VW Group Components, said. The six new factories will produce cells with a total energy value of 240 GWh per year by the time they are finished. Two of the factories will operate in Sweden, with one in Skellefteå and another in Salzgitter. The Salzgitter factory will produce cells for VW’s “high-volume segment” starting in 2025 and will have up to 40 GWh per year of capacity.
Additionally, the company said that it “has decided to refocus the previous plan in relation to cell production and concentrate production of its premium cells in the Swedish gigafactory “Northvolt Ett” in Skellefteå in collaboration with Northvolt.” This factory will begin producing cells in 2023 and will be expanded to a final annual capacity of 40 GWh.
Credit: Volkswagen
New Unified Battery Cell in 2023
Volkswagen’s plan to reduce costs is funneled through battery developments and improvements. Schmall outlined this with the idea of new, more cost-effective cells that will increase range and performance. “This will finally make e-mobility affordable and the dominant drive technology,” Schmall said.
While Volkswagen plans to purchase cells from suppliers, it also plans to create cells in-house within a series of battery production facilities. In 2023, a new, unified cell will be launched and installed in 80% of the Volkswagen group’s electric vehicles. “We will use our economies of scale to the benefit of our customers when it comes to the battery too. On average, we will drive down the cost of battery systems to significantly below €100 per kilowatt-hour,” Schmall added.
“Integration of the Value Chain”
In an attempt to secure the long-term supply of its battery cells to alleviate any concerns over its transition to electromobility, Volkswagen says it will focus on partnerships with selected strategic partners. “The new prismatic unified cell also offers the best conditions for the transition to the solid state cell – the next quantum leap in battery technology, which Volkswagen anticipates for the middle of the decade. The Group focuses consistently on strategic partnerships and efficient use of resources both for batteries and for charging,” VW said. Additionally, the VW Group said it will adhere to its strategic financial targets and will continue to aim for a 6% CAPEX ratio by 2025. It also plans to have a net cash flow of more than €10 billion in its core automotive business.
Charging Network fueled by partnerships with BP, Iberdrola, Enel
Volkswagen isn’t only working on its battery plans. The company also is working on expanding its charging platform by calling upon European power companies to help with the rollout. Partnerships with IONITY and BP will establish 8,000 new charging points throughout Europe. Additionally, 4,000 150 kW chargers will be installed at BP and ARAL service stations in Germany and Great Britain. Spain-based Iberdrola will assist Volkswagen with main traffic route coverage in Spain, and Italian company Enel will help with main and urban motorways in Italy.
Volkswagen says its total investment package for the charging infrastructure will cost around €400 million by 2025 and is looking for other companies to partner with.
In North America, 3,500 fast-charging points will be installed by Electrify America by the end of the year. In China, 17,000 will be installed as well.
Credit: Volkswagen
Planned V2G Capability
While Volkswagen says it intends to “integrate the electric car in private, commercial and public energy systems in the future,” it says that vehicles using the MEB platform will support energy storage capabilities starting in 2022. Bidirectional wall boxes to energy management systems will be developed as well, allowing owners to supply power to residential buildings, businesses, or the general power grid when needed.
Volkswagen’s full Power Day event is available below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vdnRfNwj1Fg
Elon Musk
Elon Musk’s companies made up with Apple but OpenAI still on the hook
Elon Musk’s X Corp and SpaceXAI dropped their Apple antitrust suit, leaving OpenAI as defendant.
X Corp and SpaceXAI, Elon Musk’s social platform and AI venture, have dropped Apple from the antitrust lawsuit that they filed against the iPhone maker and OpenAI last year. In a filing in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, attorneys for X and SpaceXAI moved to dismiss the Apple portion of the case, first reported by Reuters. The filing does not explain why the companies are dropping Apple or say whether a settlement was reached.
X and SpaceXAI say they intend to keep pursuing the case against OpenAI, which remains a defendant. That resolves the dispute with one company while leaving the core allegation intact against the other, with no public accounting of what changed in between.
The lawsuit dates to August 2025, when xAI and X sued Apple and OpenAI, arguing that Apple’s decision to make ChatGPT the only generative AI chatbot built into iOS gave OpenAI an unfair structural advantage. The complaint claimed ChatGPT controlled roughly 80 percent of the chatbot market at the time, while Grok held only a few percent. It sought billions of dollars in damages and asked the court to unwind the arrangement.
Elon Musk’s xAI and X file antitrust suit against Apple and OpenAI over AI exclusivity
The filing followed weeks of Musk publicly complaining that Grok and X weren’t appearing in Apple’s “Must Have” App Store section, though Grok ranked second in the Productivity category and X ranked first in News at the time. He accused Apple of “playing politics” and warned of immediate legal action before following through days later.
Apple and OpenAI tried to get the case thrown out, but a federal judge denied both motions in November, ruling the dispute was better suited to summary judgment than an early dismissal. That decision sent the case into discovery, which is presumably what led to Monday’s filing.
Hey @Apple App Store, why do you refuse to put either 𝕏 or Grok in your “Must Have” section when 𝕏 is the #1 news app in the world and Grok is #5 among all apps?
Are you playing politics? What gives? Inquiring minds want to know. https://t.co/3wenLZGtwG
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 11, 2025
The timing is notable given how Musk’s sentiment toward Apple has shifted, with Musk noting that he was open to letting Grok power a revamped Siri after a user suggested Apple replace its aging assistant with xAI’s model.
xAI, the AI venture Musk folded into X Corp last year, has since combined with SpaceX under the SpaceXAI brand. That structure now puts X, Grok and SpaceX’s rocket and satellite businesses under one roof as Musk pushes his AI ambitions beyond chatbots.
OpenAI remains the sole defendant going forward, and Musk’s companies have not said if there’s any changes to those original claims. Apple and OpenAI did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the filing.
News
Why SpaceX is finishing another space-internet system that isn’t Starlink
SpaceX launched three final O3b mPower satellites Sunday, finishing a lesser known SES satellite network.
SpaceX had an 87 minute window opening at 2:49 p.m. Eastern on Sunday to fly a Falcon 9 out of Cape Canaveral carrying the final three satellites for SES’s O3b mPower constellation, a project that has taken more than a decade to finish since Boeing and SES first signed SpaceX on for the work.
Unlike the thousands of Starlink satellites SpaceX has stacked into orbit over the years, O3b mPower flies in a different neighborhood entirely. The three new satellites, tagged F11, F12 and F13, are headed for medium Earth orbit at roughly 5,000 miles up, more than ten times higher than Starlink’s shell around 340 miles but still a small fraction of the 22,000 miles where old school geostationary satellites sit. That middle position is the whole point, because a satellite that far out needs far fewer siblings to blanket the globe than a low orbit constellation does. Essentially, SES only needed 13 satellites total to build a network offering quick, steady service that used to require thousands of spacecraft.
With most people having heard plenty about Starlink and almost nothing about O3b mPower, SES and SpaceX already blend the two networks for some customers. Both SpaceX and SES sell satellite broadband, but they’re aimed at different buyers. Starlink is built for volume, direct to consumers, RVs, homes, small businesses, plus a growing aviation and maritime business. O3b mPower skips consumers entirely and sells enterprise grade connectivity to airlines, cruise lines, offshore energy operators, telecoms needing backhaul, and governments, priced and provisioned more like a dedicated circuit.
A 2023 partnership lets cruise ships combine Starlink’s speed with O3b mPower’s steady capacity depending on what a ship needs at a given moment. Sunday’s completed 13 satellite constellation effectively finishes the medium orbit half of that pairing, years after.
Sunday’s mission was already a something on SpaceX’s manifest well before O3b mPower entered the picture. This flight marked its 29th trip to orbit, a history that includes two crewed Axiom missions, the European Space Agency’s Euclid telescope and 22 separate Starlink batches. SpaceX has landed boosters on the droneship A Shortfall of Gravitas so often that Sunday’s touchdown attempt, if it went as planned, was set to be the 661st successful Falcon booster landing to date.
For a company that pushed the Starlink constellation past 11,000 satellites back in August, almost entirely through bulk launches from California, Sunday’s flight was a reminder that SpaceX’s schedule still has room for someone else’s satellites too. SES gets a finished network built for a narrower set of customers, and Falcon 9 gets one more line on an already long resume.
Elon Musk
Tesla gives the Roadster an official “Go for launch” demonstration date
Tesla teased an October 1 Roadster reveal, reviving years of delayed SpaceX thruster hover promises.
Tesla teased an October 1 event date for its next generation Roadster, posting an image on X Saturday that shows the car lit up like it is sitting on a launch pad, with the date “10.01” stamped across the bottom and the caption “Go for launch.” A countdown clock on Tesla’s Roadster order page now points to the same date, which falls on a Thursday. The company has not said where the event will happen or whether it will be streamed at the moment. Stay with us @Teslarati for live updates.
Go for launch pic.twitter.com/Khu03eiZ04
— Tesla (@Tesla) September 12, 2026
Tesla has since sent formal invitations to reservation holders confirming the event will take place in Waco, Texas, about 90 minutes north of its Austin headquarters, based on a digital ticket shared on X by Sawyer Merritt. Tesla did not name the exact venue, though Waco sits close to SpaceX’s McGregor, Texas, rocket test site, previously reported as the planned location for a Roadster thruster demonstration. The invite sets the reveal for 8:30 p.m. Eastern on October 1, requires RSVPs by midnight on September 16, and limits entry to guests 21 and older. Invitations are non-transferable.
The tease follows nine years of a project defined by unimaginable specs along with slipped dates. Musk first showed the second generation Roadster in November 2017 as a surprise reveal at the end of the Tesla Semi event, promising a 0 to 60 mph time under two seconds, a top speed above 250 mph, 620 miles of range from a 200 kWh battery, and production starting in 2020. At last November’s shareholder meeting, Musk set an April 1 demo date and joked the choice gave him “deniability” if it slipped again, which it did, moving first to late April, then to “a month or so,” then to August.
Tesla Roadster SpaceX Package’s 1.1-second 0-60 mph launch visualized in concept video
Whatever Tesla shows on October 1 is expected to center on the SpaceX developed thruster package Musk has described since 2018. Internally code named A71, a nod to the Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird, the system reportedly uses cold gas thrusters fed by a composite overwrapped pressure vessel, the same tank design SpaceX uses on Falcon 9. Musk has said a thruster equipped Roadster could hit 60 mph in about 1.1 seconds under roughly 2.75 g of launch force, well past the 1.9 second figure quoted for the standard car. That version reportedly will not be street legal and has reportedly been discussed as a limited run sold through a track only program.
The standard Roadster is still expected to carry the original $200,000 base price and $250,000 Founders Series tier, both set when Tesla opened $50,000 and $250,000 reservations in 2017. Tesla VP of Vehicle Engineering Lars Moravy has confirmed production will happen at Gigafactory Texas, with Musk targeting 2027 or 2028, 12 to 18 months after whatever the company demonstrates next month.