Volkswagen is trying to implement a comprehensive cost-cutting programme with up to 100,000 job losses, double the amount previously planned, by 2030 and the potential contraction or closure of several plants.
Could start by making good cars again. Bmw couldn’t get any worse at this point
Volkswagen sales in China itself dropped 36% because they don’t offer competitive EV’s compared to local EV’s. The quality and innovation of Chinese EV’s is well ahead of what European manufacturers can offer.
Even what were regarded as luxury brands like BMW and Mercedes have lost more than 30% sales.
It has nothing to do with the Chinese threat but all do to with lack of innovation and investment in new technologies by both European and especially US car manufacturers.
https://autofreak.com/vw-bmw-mercedes-china-sales-collapse-q2/
How about the car industry making bold moves into EV production instead? They have fought EVs tooth and nail, and lobbied to retain the fossile fuel market forever.
They trie dto make enormous EV car and nobody buy them. They didn’t try to make affordable cars. Because this would impact the economy of leech we have in Europe.
We’ve tried nothing, and we’re all out of ideas
Exactly. And now bail us out, or else!
free market advocates become anti free market when china comes into play
The threat is your disinterest in battery, charging and EV technology?
German cars have become the same plastic crap with the same spying software, but still at double the price.
I would happily buy a 2010 level German car if they would still make it.
I drive a 1999 Skoda Octavia, VAG, with the 1.9 TDI, with the mechanical pump. The thing, with proper maintenance, is ultra reliable. Doesn’t leak or burn oil. It hasn’t had a major repair in 27 years/400.000 km, just consumables, like a clutch, belts, a starter motor, stuff like that.
Two people I know that have bought VAG cars the last 5 years are constantly bitching about their cars.
Engineering is not the problem here, it’s management making engineering decisions.
The Chinese make generational planning. Western make quarterly decisions to appeal to speculators, not investors.
Western car makers, and Japanese/Koreans, definitely have the know how to make good value EVs, and some do (see Renault and Hyundai). If western and free market oriented Asian makers made long term investment and decisions they would compete just fine.
It started to become visible mid 00s. My Audi A4 was a great car mechanically - but it had to go for ‘repairs’ at least two times a year. Not because something was really broke - but because yet another sensor was malfunctioning. Massive costs, not for real repairs, but for mechanics hours figuring out which sensor was the culprit this time. Not one time there was a real mechanical problem.
They refused to make the transformation from gasoline to electro vehicles.
Not really. China is trying to wage economical war with the world.
Chinese EVs are made by workers who live in cages and work 12+ hour days making $500/mo in a country that’s only 80% cheaper than the US. IE $500 is like living off $650/mo in the US if your living expenses were paid (and your home was a cage coffin). You’re basically an indentured servant because you can leave, but you’ll be homeless because you can’t save enough to live in the city.
Second, the CCP subsidize the shit out of EVs. Then sells them across the world.
These two things are designed to destroy the auto industry across the world. The sad thing is most people are to idiotic to realize it. They just go “I wAnT cHeAp EvS duurrr”. Plus, at least domestic Chinese EVs are scary AF, they have an insanely higher rate of thermal runaway. You can have you cheap EV at the cost of helping destroy your domestic economy, just don’t park that shit within 590 feet of my house.
I think you’re forgetting about Tesla. Long before China was the competitor Tesla was kicking European carmakers’ asses and they were not even interested in responding. They ignored EV for about a decade and then when EU tried to push them by banning ICE cars they fought against it. Yes, is China beating them now but they made it really easy for them.
That is not entirely true. VW saw the risk and said that they could beat Tesla in three years’ time by producing a better electric vehicle than Tesla ever could due to their superior knowledge of vehicle construction and supply chain. They were too full of themselves.
We can ignore the early Tesla Roadster which was more a proof of concept and fun halo car than a daily driver for the masses. We can also ignore the EV1 with a far shorter range and a few compliance cars and experiments. Then there’s the model S which was available in Europe from 2013 which you could actually buy. There were barely any fast chargers at that point but the early Model S was a functional fast and cleverly packaged car for its time. It took a while for the masses to get convinced. I vividly remember driving that car at that time and the interest and questions people had.
VW did start development around 2013 it seems and it feels like they were targeting the cheaper Model 3’s future market rather than the much more expensive Model S. They saw the importance.
Where they failed was in building a feature complete car in due time. The ID3 was late and was functionally incomplete. I recall news articles of many produced ID3s waiting in the parking lot for engineers to update them. The ID3 was almost a prototype of what should have been. VW was right in that Tesla would not be able to get the factories up and running correctly, but by ignoring workers’ well-being Tesla did manage to produce. Quality control seemed non-existent but the car was for sale. The ID3 not.
Then there was the charging infrastructure which Tesla had largely set up at that time in a monopolistic way but VW did not have. People need that. One can argue that the Tesla Superchargers still provide a superior experience tot the alternative for other brands.
I don’t think they were blind. Neither was BMW for that matter and probably many others. I think they underestimated the value of the mix Tesla brought and the value of their supply chain. The Tesla was was fast but no one blamed you for it, it was a cultural icon, it was a very strong signal to move away from fossil fuels. A signal VW or any other brand had not dared to play in to. That makes it a tall order where you have to produce a superior offering and they failed at that. Even today Tesla’s vehicles have an efficient chassis design and you could only really destroy the company’s status by going openly against a human friendly stance (ie: Nazi style) or against an ecological stance which is what they did.
VW and many other makes because they were full of themselves. Nearly no new car maker succeeded in breaking into the market. Electric cars made that possible.
So you’re basically saying that they tried to compete but failed because they thought it will be easier and didn’t try hard enough. Could be but it’s still doesn’t excuse them. They were not interested in making the right thing. They knew making EVs is possible but helping with climate change was not their goal. It still isn’t. They still do the bare minimum they think they have to do to survive.
China has always been the land of the cheap workforce. What’s the reality today is robot factories, rapid concept to design to delivery pipelines. Essentially Europe, Japan and the USA have lost the race to innovate.
And the ccp cars are garbage/unsafe/rolling spy machines, but if they flood the market they can bankrupt the the auto industry and cause chaos.
All new cars are spy machines. As for unsafe, we haven’t seen that in Australia.
But this is capitalism. If German manufacturers can’t compete, they should shut down. Survival of the fittest and free-markets etc etc. there will be job losses but the German people should ask their leaders why that happened
Exactly. They insisted China become capitalist then complain when they do capitalism.
Article doesn’t really point to Chinese vehicles being the primary reason though- it’s that demand is down for cars in Europe.
That said, it’s not really free market capitalist anyway for China to heavily subsidize EV production.
Chinese car makers aren’t really more subsidized than Europeans and US. Actually we’re only seeing the brands that survived the internal competition of the Chinese car market, where a ton of brands failed and died.
What we’re seeing are the brands that survived that competition through extreme optimization, at a level no other car manufacturer had to reach before. And they did that in a growing market of 1.5 billion people.
Why should they struggle when competing with an aging industry with aging production modes that only address ~600m people? Especially when those companies offer objectively worse products at worse prices?
“Objectively”
And just because China had companies go under doesn’t mean they aren’t still subsidized to the hilt.
I do enjoy though people that are normally pro Union, pro worker, etc. essentially arguing that these people’s jobs don’t matter and we’ll take subsidized foreign cars just because they’re cheaper.
You think European car brands aren’t subsidized?
And this has nothing to do with struggling European car brands? https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/eu-relent-combustion-engines-ban-after-auto-industry-pressure-2025-12-16/
Lol you speak as if teslas haven’t been heavily subsidized for decades. The difference is that chinese ev’s are cheaper and deliver good quality.
Teslas are American and of course have been subsidized. But the article is about Volkswagen and German companies…
A fair argument can be made that the Chinese government considers EV an imperative and interferes and subsidizes, so it’s not fully free market. Thus any country with industry competing with China needs to decide if they care and if they care, how to respond to advantage conferred by China government policies. Whether that’s similar incentives for their domestic industry and/or tariffs to try to level the playing field.
That’s only a “fair” argument to make if one assumes that orthodox neoliberal policies such as the EU’s ban on state aid are somehow the universal ethical norm. Will, they aren’t.
If we made neoliberalism our dogma and the Chinese are outcompeting us maybe our dogma is fucking wrong.
There’s a reason I explicitly mentioned state aid as an option. So it’s a fair argument because currently they are disadvantaged. Advocating for equivalent state aid wild be on the table
Volkswagen was a state funded company until the sixties ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
New factories, battery research and stuff like that are heavily subsidized for German car makers as well.
Maybe China is subsidizing more, but maybe that only speaks for sound economic decisions in China, like
A. they have the money, apparently
B. they subsidize future technologies instead of fabulating about e-fuels and whatnot.
Volkswagen gets a lot of bad rep but as I understand it, it’s not a horrible company. They have a very strong worker union. To my understanding they can’t close a factory in Germany without a union’s approval. That in itself is a huge handicap over BYD where workers get far fewer rights.
Volkswagen used to be one of the largest exporters from the EU. If I were a liberal foreign entity then I’d love for some dirt to stick to that. They have continued to focus on keeping their German workforce employed rather than producing everything overseas though they were proud to announce that they could do a full car development and production cycle in China a few years back so things do change.
Not that I care too much for the brand but I find it very odd how Volkswagen is getting so much hate.
If we want a closer apples to apples comparison, we should at least demand that our imports have been produced under the same environmental and workplace standards as we have here or better.
it’s not a horrible company
😅. It was literally started by Hitler himself.
“But that was a long time ago”…yeah, well. Then give BYD some ~50ish years, by then BYD might be as righteous as Volkswagen is now…cough Dieselgate, cough.
Cfr Hitler, sure. But either we should have slashed it back then or we should accept it as it is. It was nearly disbanded but the British though it was better to keep a workers’ factory (I should look it up though).
Perhaps it’s ok to look at the now. They are to my understanding one of the most worker-centered companies of their scale. Certainly not something for libertarians to like. BYD can improve worker conditions. That would be great and I’m all for that. I also like that they brought the price of BEVs down. I do believe that if we want to raise standards as humanity in a global setting, that we should demand products entering the market to have followed those standards. Like we already do with safety standards. That makes it interesting for regions to raise the bar also.
For dieselgate I was also very 🤢 about that and did not care too much for the brand. Yet later many other makes were found to do the same tricks but VW somehow got singled out. I still don’t know why, they were first to be discovered but perhaps there’s more to it?
I’m glad the scandal got discovered. It pushed BEV forward. We should do the very best we can to stop using oil, ideally in a fair and open world.
its not that a certain minister of economy has called them out on their wrong course 5 years ago. But he was shut down as fearmongering and pushing a political agenda.
Folks were saying this when Tesla released model S, and did a reasonable job on the timeline. That’s 14 years ago. But those were tree hugging fanatics who don’t understand the importance of short term stock prices.
Who could have seen this comming…corruption catching up… Who could have seen it coming that bribing politicians to allow them producing their product, that the people dont want anymore, wouldnt result in people wanting their product!!? Truely mind boggeling /s
The so called “chinese threat” is the chinese not buying their cars anymore?
Euro cars are known to be finicky and when something goes wrong it’s also always a write off unless it’s under warranty.
Have they tried making cars that don’t break after 3-5 years again?
Best I can do is put cameras all over it and track everything that happens inside and out of the car “for your safety”.
I mean, most American models come broken from the factory…
🇯🇵 America is only worth talking about for trucks. Japan, China and sometimes even Korea do normal cars better
That would break them. Building cars that last means less demand for the next new car. Planned obsolescence is the only way to make sure the next round of vehicles has a market, regardless of whether its a significant enough improvement to justify the cost.
Doesn’t sound quite right to me - isn’t Toyota a top brand globally, and doing just fine building cars engineered to last hundreds of thousands of miles? Somehow there’s plenty of market for their cars year after year.
Different business model. Toyota has the Lexus brand, but they rest most of their business model on the shrinking mass market. It works great… when there’s a significant amount of money in the low- to mid-tier markets. Volkswagen group, Mercedes, etc. target upper-mid to luxury/sport markets. Their target market is people with money who want status symbols, not just tools. It has to run flawless, while it runs, but it doesn’t have to run forever because it’s just as much a fashion accessory as it is for transportation; and fashion trends need regular refreshes.
If you target that market with a super-reliable product, you get an Instant Pot. The original models were designed to be damn near bullet proof and last forever. People will take those things to the grave with them, but once everyone who would consider them had one?.. the bottom fell out of the market and they didn’t diversify into other appliances in time to make up for the lost revenue from their primary line of business. Fell into chapter 11 and got snapped up by a bigger fish. The new ones suck so bad… but it keeps people replacing them.
Line go up.
China is not the threat since Germany can always impose tariffs. As the article points out, benefits to workers are too high. Germany must explore other industries besides car manufacturing. This is where it’s important for Germany to encourage immigrants with talent to study and work there. The AfD will exploit the warnings of job collapse to gain power. Hitler rose to power when the democratic Weimar Republic couldn’t control inflation.
Tariffs won’t help because while they’re losing across the board, the most important market for VW, and also the one with the most drastic losses, is not Germany but China. They bet a lot on expansion into China and once reached ~20% market share there, but that has since dropped to half. For BEV specifically it’s abysmal, so the outlook is also bad: BEV has rapidly risen to nearly 60% of the Chinese retail market but VW’s share is in the low single digits.
Good point.
Germany must explore other industries besides car manufacturing.
This! Our industry is far too dependent on the car market. Car ownership is going down and people don’t need to buy new cars all the time. The market is saturated. When I look around, everybody is driving a relatively new car that won’t have to be replaced for years. It’s just not a growth industry - and by the love of god, it shouldn’t be one.
Germany could explore other ways of making money such as tourism and film making. Encouraging foreign students to study in Germany would bring tuition money.
Or simply other technologies. Instead of cars, heat pumps and ACs, both in high demand. Electrolysers for converting excess renewable energy into H2. Electric bikes. Electronic chips. Drones. Whatever.
Yes.
