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Power Outage Cuts Into Production at VW's Largest Plant

By Andreas Cremer

BERLIN, March 10 (Reuters) - Volkswagen AG said on Monday it was still seeking the cause of a weekend power outage at its biggest factory and said production had been cut by several hundred vehicles, more than it initially estimated.

The outage affecting generators at VW's Wolfsburg-based plant, which occurred early on Saturday and lasted for several hours, also affected adjacent parts of the northern German city, where Europe's largest automotive group is headquartered.

VW initially pegged the loss of production at Wolfsburg at about 100 cars. The biggest plant in VW's global network of over 100 factories employs more than 50,000 workers and assembles up to 3,800 cars per day.

"We're a bit more clear now on the impact of what happened," a spokesman said on Monday. "Final effects of the power failure will be fixed over the next few days," he said, noting delivery dates were not at risk. "The search for the cause of the incident is continuing."

VW is running extra shifts in Wolfsburg during the first quarter to cope with demand for the revamped Golf hatchback, its top-selling model, and the Tiguan compact sport-utility vehicle. The carmaker has a 2014 goal to "moderately" increase deliveries from last year's record 9.7 million autos. (Additional reporting by Andreas Rinke; Editing by David Holmes)