Over the coming years, Volkswagen’s central plant in Wolfsburg, Germany, will be converted to produce more and more electric vehicles. The rise of this kind of more simple to assemble vehicles, and the sea-change in the industry it brings along with it, have led to some anxiety among autoworkers. To ease that stress, VW is “trapping” its employees.
More precisely, the automaker has created an escape room for its Wolfsburg workers, and this isn’t the first time. Volkswagen claims that it used this tactic previously, at its Emden and Zwickau plants, in Germany, which have already been converted to produce electric vehicles. There, the concept was met with positive feedback, according to Gerardo Scarpino, the deputy chairman of the General Works Council.
“The idea proved extremely popular – that is why we have included it for Wolfsburg, too,” said Scarpino. “The transition to e-mobility can only happen together with our colleagues. Getting them on board, inspiring and training them is absolutely crucial to our collective success.”
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Dubbed the eMotionRoom, the escape rooms were conceived of and developed in-house by the Volkswagen Group Academy. The puzzle consists of three rooms, each of which takes 20 minutes to complete.
The first room tracks the history of electric vehicles all the way back to the 1800s, when the idea first came about. Then, employees can learn the history of the Wolfsburg plant, and, finally, the third room takes a look at the future of electric driving.
Employees will tackle the rooms in teams of four, and will have to solve a variety of puzzles in them to open the door to the next room. Each team can be guided by instructors from the VW Group Academy, and the activity is part of a one-day eMotionDay that covers other things like the use of virtual reality headsets in production.
Volkswagen says that it will be putting 22,000 employees through this training, so the eMotionRoom will be around until at least the end of 2024. By that point, production of the ID.3 will have been going on for about a year alongside its internal combustion vehicles like the Tiguan.
