It smells like fresh paint, and the mobile platforms on which workers are assembling cars are not yet running at full speed. A specialist from the systems maker walks behind a small automated vehicle that is navigating through the hall to learn its way around. Soon it—and many of its “colleagues”—will be delivering components on their own to the individual assembly stations.
This is what the world’s most modern automotive production plant looks like in late June 2019. It is located in one of the automotive industry’s most historically significant sites—Stuttgart-Zuffenhausen, the headquarters of the Porsche sports-car maker. Here is where the Porsche Taycan, first presented to the public on September 4, is being built.