Autostadt – Volkswagen Car Tower in Germany

The Autostadt, situated next to Volkswagen’s headquarter in Wolfsburg, Germany. The Autostadt is a visitor attraction, the company’s theme park, and distribution centre where daily 5,500 visitors view Volkswagen Group’s major brands (like VW owns Audi, Lamborghini, Bentley and Bugatti) and two incredible Car Towers.

Photo by Bernd

It features a museum, feature pavilions for the principal automobile brands in the Volkswagen Group, a customer centre where customers can pick up new cars, and take a tour through the enormous factory, a guide to the evolution of roads, and cinema in a large sphere.

It is also home to the largest glass doors in the world and the longest printed line. The line starts from outside Wolfsburg and travels through Autostadt to a point on a farm. It is about 4 miles (6.4 km) long.

The Car Towers, a famous Autostadt landmark in Wolfsburg, are situated next to the Car Distribution Centre in the east corner of the Autostadt. The fully glazed, galvanised steel frame constructions offer a view into the interior of the two cylinders. The towers create a modern architectural contrast to the four chimneys of the Volkswagen power station and make up the heart of the Autostadt new car delivery system. Each of the fully automated, high-rise stacks has space for up to 400 vehicles. The new cars are rolled over from the neighbouring Volkswagen plant using a robotic-pallet system mounted on rails. The cars are loaded into and fetched from the towers using two “car shuttles” or lifts per tower, each servicing 180° of the silo.

Photo by autostadt.de

New cars are prominently stored there for roughly 24 hours before being delivered to customers. A signal which is activated by the customer-service agent sets one of the car shuttles in motion. The shuttle then selects the correct vehicle and conveys it to the centre of the tower from where it is gently lowered to the ground floor. Thereafter the new car rolls through a tunnel into the Car Distribution Centre. Here, in the LastFinish area, number plates are mounted before the customer takes final charge of the vehicle. Each day, an average 500 Volkswagen and SEAT cars are delivered to new owners in the Autostadt.

Photo by autostadt.de

AUTOSTADT – AWARD-WINNING CAR TOWERS:

THE “WORLD’S FASTEST AUTOMATIC PARKING SYSTEM”
The Autostadt Car Towers have made it into the 2014 BOOK OF GUINNESS WORLD RECORDS with vehicle transport technology that has been recognized as the “fastest automatic parking system in the world” in the category “extraordinary elevators”. With a record speed of two metres per second, new vehicles are transported – in one minute and 44 seconds from the entrance of the towers to the highest parking space. This makes the fully automated high-rise parking system the fastest in the world.

Photo by Arjan Haverkamp