Volkswagen raises production target for electric cars

German automaker Volkswagen AG said Friday that it is ahead of schedule in producing electric cars and announced new overall plan to produce 1.5 million electric cars by 2025.

The previous strategic target of one million electric cars is expected to be reached by the end of 2023 -- two years earlier than anticipated, the company said.

In September this year at the Frankfurt Motor Show, Volkswagen unveiled the new all-electric ID.3 model and vowed to become a world market leader in e-mobility. Over 37,000 customers have reserved an ID.3 and paid a pre-booking deposit, the company said, adding that the model is expected to appear on the market from summer 2020.

The new production target "shows that people want climate-friendly individual mobility -- and we are making it affordable for millions of people," Thomas Ulbrich, Member of the Volkswagen brand Board of Management responsible for e-mobility, said in a statement.

The company said it is investing 33 billion euros (36.8 billion U.S. dollars) in e-mobility throughout the group by 2024.

According to Volkswagen, production of the ID.3 model started in November at the company's Zwickau plant in Germany. From 2021, up to 330,000 electric vehicles (EV) will leave the assembly line each year, making Zwickau the largest and most efficient EV factory in Europe.

Meanwhile, preparations for the production of its ID. EV models are well underway in China and the United States, and pre-production already started at the Anting plant in Shanghai, it added.