Volkswagen is asking workers to finish an escape room expertise with collaborative video games and puzzles to ease anxiousness over job safety within the shift to electrical vehicles.

VW, which is spending 89 billion euros ($95 billion) on new know-how by means of 2026, is utilizing the eMotionRoom venture at its Wolfsburg headquarters to assist swap over about 22,000 staff to creating EVs, the automaker mentioned in an announcement.

First up are round 1,200 workers assigned to work on the electrical ID3 mannequin slated to begin manufacturing throughout the second half of this yr.

“That is one constructing block within the strategy of bringing the employees into the world of e-mobility,” Gunnar Kilian, VW’s head of human sources, mentioned throughout a presentation of the positioning, co-designed and constructed by staff.

“For a lot of, it’s a very new factor that the combustion engine won’t be there anymore and we’ve to coach individuals for a high-voltage setting.”

In groups of 4, workers want to unravel riddles as they transfer by means of areas themed on electrical energy and battery know-how, shifting from an 1860s lounge to present-day and future situations requiring tech abilities to crack codes and discover clues in lockers.

Earlier this month, Ford mentioned it’s reducing 3,800 jobs primarily in Germany because the automaker goes electric-only within the area with EV fashions requiring fewer individuals to make them.

Other than the ID3, VW plans to fabricate at the least two extra electrical fashions at its sprawling headquarters campus by 2026, the brand new Tiguan SUV adopted by one other SUV.

The latter is supposed to interchange the important thing Trinity electric-car venture, which CEO Officer Oliver Blume determined to push again by at the least two years due to software program delays.

VW is investing 460 million euros by early 2025 to retool the Wolfsburg plant for EV manufacturing, with the bulk going towards manufacturing amenities and the rest on qualifying the workforce.