Scout Plant Launch
Scout’s $2bn US plant prepares for pre-series production
Scout’s Blythewood factory is 80% complete, with highly automated body production, all-electric paint lines and capacity for 200,000 vehicles annually as the VW Group brand prepares to build its first pre-series models.
Ankle-deep potholes, muddy puddles, rutted furrows and metre-long clouds of dust - anyone who wants to visit Jörn Petri at his workplace needs a robust vehicle such as a Ford F-150 or Dodge Ram 1500. “For now,” says the German, whose place of work is currently in Blythewood in South Carolina. Because here, 20 minutes north-east of Columbia, as “Vice President Plant Launch” together with his Vice President of Plant Engineering Ronald Grosse, he is currently building for the VW Group the main plant of the new brand Scout, with which the Lower Saxony-based company finally wants to succeed in the US market.
The full-size pick-up Terra and a correspondingly large SUV called Traveler, both constructed exactly like the perennial bestsellers from Detroit on a ladder frame, are intended to make the Wolfsburg group socially acceptable again in the USA.
Scout wants to build 200,000 vehicles per year
Almost two and a half years after the first groundbreaking in February 2024, Petri and Grosse have already completed 80 per cent of their job: The buildings, which together cover a good 500,000 square metres, have meanwhile all been completed, says Petri, who manages a budget of around two billion dollars. Scout is investing this much plus another 300 million for the supplier park in the factory, which later under full load is to produce up to 200,000 vehicles per year: “Then around 40 cars will roll off the line here per hour, one every 90 seconds.”
Scout CEO Scott Keogh also sees the project fully on track. The new production centre is on schedule, the progress on the construction site is breathtaking. Now it is a matter, with full determination, of bringing the plant fully into operation - and at the same time creating a lasting economic impetus for the South Carolina region.
Despite setbacks, pre-series production is about to begin
Keogh is not spreading this optimism without reason: most recently there were many reports of problems and delays in development, and the late decision to respond to the cooled enthusiasm for electric drive with a range extender certainly did not shorten the timetable either. But Petri and Grosse are brimming with confidence: “We are fully on schedule with the plant.” And the fact that they are still missing the cars for now is something they want to do something about themselves soon and lend the developers a hand.
In the autumn, the production of the first pre-series models is to begin in Blythewood, which must then go into the cold as quickly as possible for the winter tests. Then further prototypes will be built next year, before deliveries are finally due to begin at the start of 2028. Many had hoped that customer vehicles could start as early as next year.
While outside excavators and bulldozers are still at work, the interior fitting-out in the five large factory halls has therefore long since been running at full speed: After Petri and Grosse switched on the lights for the first time in June - and, in the humid summers of the American South, much more importantly, the air conditioning - the body shell construction has now been fully assembled, to general surprise already one hundred per cent automated. The first body shells for the almost six-metre-long Terra have therefore already been welded together by what will later be more than 700 robots.
Local sustainability in focus
In the other halls they are currently preparing everything for final assembly and filling the paint lines, which VW ordered turnkey from GM's in-house supplier Gallagher Kaiser. For the first time in the VW Group they will be operated purely electrically and therefore need neither heating gas nor ovens. The energy for this is supplied by the local utility Dominion Energy - one hundred per cent from renewable sources, Petri says proudly.
And that is only one point that stands for the sustainability of the plant: Two more are to be the huge heat pumps from the group subsidiary Everllence, which has just been sold, that heat the process water. Two compressors each with an output of 12.5 megawatts are to heat and cool here in future. And because the local authorities are afraid of erosion and concerned about the drinking water table, every fallow area is planted within two weeks and all rainwater is stored in retention basins before being filtered and pumped back into the cycle.
Construction site is driven by the “can-do” spirit
For now, around 500 to 1,000 of the total of around 4,500 construction workers engaged for the project outside and assembly helpers inside still shape the scene every day. They mostly live in trailer parks just a few minutes from the construction site and work very differently from what one knows from Europe, says Grosse. He praises not only the “can-do” spirit, which is much more results-oriented than in Europe, but also their speed and their organisation.
For example, they do not cart the concrete in from many kilometres away, but have simply dug two wells and are now making it themselves here on the site. And so that they are never without the right equipment or forced to take a break by technical defects, the teams come empty-handed from the outset - and borrow all the equipment from two service providers, each of which keeps a huge fleet of machines. “This minimises downtime,” says Grosse.
Recruiting staff remains challenging
But Scout has already hired the first of what will later be more than 4,000 employees, who are now being prepared for the job at the universities in the city, in the training centre on the edge of the plant site or in learning workshops here in the halls. And that does not include the around 1,000 jobs in the supplier park, where, for example, a huge assembly hall is currently being built for the batteries of the rustic vehicle that is fully electric or equipped with an additional combustion engine as a range extender.
Finding personnel has meanwhile no longer been quite so easy, even if 900,000 people lived within a 45-minute drive here. Because it has long since no longer been as structurally weak here as the Southern states are often perceived to be, says Petri.
The automotive industry in particular has contributed to that, being represented in the region with more than half a dozen plants: BMW made the start in Spartanburg, then Mercedes came to Tuscaloosa, VW builds the Atlas in Chattanooga, Honda has a plant in Lincoln, Alabama, Volvo in Ridgeville, and the Koreans have no fewer than three plants in the Southern states. Despite the difficult labour market, Blythewood prevailed against around 70 other candidates, Petri says. He analysed the bulk of them only in theory, but the Group inspected the shortlist of 18 locations on site, discussed six of them in greater depth, until in the end four locations were pursued further in parallel - until the decision in favour of Blythewood was made in 2023.
At a time when plant settlements were really difficult: “Covid was over, prices went through the roof, and where previously one or two gigaprojects were built in the USA, now more than a dozen are running in parallel.”
Scout plant in Blythewood (South Carolina)
- Location: Blythewood, South Carolina (USA), around 20 minutes north-east of Columbia
- Products: E-pick-up Scout Terra and SUV Scout Traveler
- Investment volume: US$2.0 billion for the plant, plus an additional US$300 million for the supplier park
- Start of construction: February 2024
- Building area: More than 500,000 square metres of production and plant buildings
- Plant size: Around 650 hectares of site area
- Start of production pre-series: Autumn 2026
- Start of series production: Planned for early 2028
- Production capacity: Up to 200,000 vehicles per year
- Cycle time: One vehicle every 90 seconds or around 40 vehicles per hour
- Use of robots: More than 700 robots in body-in-white construction
- Employees: More than 4,000 employees planned at the plant, around 1,000 additional jobs in the supplier park
But only because Blythewood had been the "best match" here, the former timber plantation was not perfect either, Grosse concedes: In order to pave Scout's way to South Carolina, a great deal of earth had to be moved: "At around 20 million cubic metres, we were at that time one of the biggest construction sites in the whole of the USA."
Flexible production poised to start
However, Scout is now also equipped for the future: At around 650 hectares, the site is large enough to mirror the factory and double capacities. And not only for possible further models of its own brand, but also for Group vehicles or contract manufacturing. "As long as it stands on a ladder frame, we can build any car here," say the two bosses on the construction site. "Our quality targets for this go far beyond US standards and would be high enough even for Audi or Porsche."
In the meantime, however, the heavy equipment has almost been withdrawn, with only a few mini excavators still operating. For Petri and Grosse are on the home straight, can switch on a few more robots every week and release a few more production sections. And by the time the summer holidays are over, all roads on the site will also be asphalted. Just as well, because if the first cars are to roll off the line for the upcoming winter tests, it will apparently still take around a year and a half before there is a suitable vehicle in the VW Group for rough construction sites.
