On the Brussels plant’s massive roof is a solar energy array that can generate up to 9.7 megawatts of electricity, depending on the amount of sunshine. Installed in 2012, the array, on average, generates about 13 percent of the energy used in the production process, “but on a sunny summer day, we can get up to 50 percent,” Peter D’hoore, head of external communications at Audi Brussels, told Automotive News during a tour in December.
Rooftop view
The array is scheduled for an upgrade, which is expected to increase its efficiency and provide the plant with even more energy, D’hoore said. Standing on the building’s roof, it’s possible to see not only the solar array, but also the nearby water treatment plant, with trains that now deliver the factory’s batteries parked in between.
When it first began building the original Audi e-tron, in 2018, the vehicle’s battery cells were trucked into the plant. Now, the plant receives its cells from a plant almost 900 miles away in Göd, Hungary, near Budapest, shipping them by electric train.
“We used to ship them by truck, but switching to the train saves us about 2,600 tons of CO2 per year,” Jan Marls, head of production at Audi Brussels, told Automotive News in December.