Aerial cable car in Volkswagen Bratislava. (source: Courtesy of Volkswagen )
The ten year anniversary of a unique aerial cable car, constructed specifically for the Volkswagen Slovakia (VW SK) car manufacturing plant in Bratislava, was celebrated on November 27. This one-of-a-kind aerial lift, which transports cars between the assembly hall and the test track, dominates the silhouette of the plant.
The lift is unique even within the entire Volkswagen operation; it was designed and constructed in connection with the arrival of the Volkswagen Touareg, for the purpose of transporting large numbers of vehicles from the assembly hall to the test track. A lot of innovation went into the project, as no similar cable car existed before it, VW SK wrote in a press release.
The aerial cable car war designed as a new transport carriage prototype on which the cars are transported to other loading stations. It is 455 metres in length, and runs 99.5 percent of the time that the factory is in operation. The trip from one station to the next lasts about 4.5 minutes, with a maximum speed of three metres per second. The steel cable on which the gondolas hang is 8-stranded and anticlockwise, and was used on this cable car for the very first time. Eight transport carriages are hung, each weighing 2.5 tons and bear a load capacity of an additional 2.5 tons.
Since 2002, the lift has transported all of the models produced in the Bratislava plant: Volkswagen Golf, Volkswagen Polo, Škoda Octavia and all the currently produced models.
