Porsche has opened a new engine plant for eight-cylinder engines. The factory at Porsche’s main site in Stuttgart-Zuffenhausen works with state-of-the-art production methods, and at full plant utilisation its 400 employees produce around 200 eight-cylinder V-engines daily. The sports car manufacturer has invested nearly €80m (US$89m) in the new production facility.
“Porsche stands for sporty high-performance engines: from engine design to series production,” says Oliver Blume, chairman of the executive board of Porsche AG. “We are further extending our competence in this area with the new engines. This is how we will assure our customers the driving pleasure of tomorrow and safeguard the future jobs of our employees. At the same time, we are creating the necessary foundation for successfully leading Porsche into the new age of electric mobility.” Porsche’s new engine plant will also contribute towards synergies within the Volkswagen Group. Plans call for producing the eight-cylinder V-engines for all Group brands in Stuttgart-Zuffenhausen from this point forward”.
Porsche states that around 100 innovations were incorporated into the production system concept. For instance, Porsche implemented industrial transport vehicles that are user-programmable. The electric transporters, which are powered by lithium-titanate batteries, navigate over a grid network of 16,000 magnets that are mounted in the floors of the two plant levels. Their flexibility makes it possible to readily adapt production processes to potential product changes and new methods later on.
The assembly of a new engine begins every 3.5 minutes. 95 workpiece carriers transport the engines along the line designed in a U-shape that is a total of 432 metres long. In 110 work cycles, of which 71 are in the manufacturing areas, the eight-cylinder engine is produced in 6.2 hours. Porsche is increasingly making use of digitalisation and data management capabilities in its production process for the new eight-cylinder V-engines.
Read the technical details of Porsche’s all-new V8 engine in The Knowledge