"Our goal is realistic, but it is not set in stone. Building battery cell factories is not an end in itself. The expansion of the factories will depend on how the market for electric cars develops," Thomas Schmall said, according to pre-released excerpts of the interview due to be published in full on Sunday in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung.
But Schmall has re-evaluated that goal multiple times since then, leaving up in the air whether the carmaker will build additional plants, including one it was considering building in Eastern Europe, or expand existing ones.
PowerCo's three announced plants - in Spain's Valencia, Ontario's Canada and Germany's Salzgitter - have a combined capacity of up to 170 gigawatt hours.
The plants in Spain and Canada could be expanded and it remained to be seen whether the carmaker would do so, Schmall said, without providing detail on when a decision would be made on the matter.
