"Volkswagen says its core VW brand is ‘no longer competitive’ financially" - Article

[Tooney]

Berlin — Volkswagen’s original brand is “no longer competitive,” the company’s brand chief warned Monday, owing to high costs and low productivity.

“With many of our pre-existing structures, processes and high costs, we are no longer competitive as the Volkswagen brand,” Thomas Schaefer told staff during a meeting at the German carmaker’s headquarters in Wolfsburg, Germany, according to a post on the company’s intranet site seen by Reuters.’
https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/27/business/volkswagen-brand-no-longer-competitive/index.html

Sponsored

 

[tutis]

They killed the brand a few years back when they started cutting corners on the Golf VIII, and then drum brakes on their ID4, cheap plastics, no leds for HVC controls... And then there's the state of dealers (can only talk for Europe)... a disgrace. Did we mention that while they were cutting costs on things that matters to customers they were having a dumpster fire over at Cariad? 2k software engineers were recently let go. I'm not sure there are that many Linux kernel developers our there...

The Chinese and the Koreans ate VW's "good value" market, and VW responded with "we'll just make our products worse, that'll work"

 

[andb]

VW is run by old-mentality managers, those must be replaced with fresh blood for the company to survive the electric and software transition.
Indeed they cut costs in the wrong place, their product instead in their operation.

 

[Crazymind]

No wonder if it takes two men to carry the front of an i4 before fitting.
VW brand has been battling low margins for years and “cheapened” the new golf to improve margins.

 

[RAHRCR]

VW will be fine. Step 1 on doing a transformation is creating the case for change. It appears that this box is checked. Stay tuned…

 

[Archimedes]

Talk about a click bait article headline…

They’re negotiating with the unions through the media. Gotta cut costs, both labor and infrastructure. VW will be just fine. The sooner they get the ID Buzz, and the EV GTI, to the US, the better. My ‘23 GTI is fantastic.

Sponsored