Volkswagen planning to cut up to 100.000 jobs globally

A German economist explained on Insta that the main reason they are doing this is because Moody's making politics and reduced VWs rating, and VW is one of the largest credit holders in Europe and now they have been forced to act and do something about this unplanned rating change which will make loans expensive for them, without actually being a concrete automotive related issue in the first place.

VW is a massive casualty, but the future of automotive is currently a cutthroat war between BYD and Tesla. Everyone else is, at best, a second tier competitor.

Auto industry/dealerships for trad cars is not looking good.

It is unfortunate for the employees but it is necessary, and hopefully also a wake up call for other German companies and the government.

It’s time for leaner structures, smaller teams, faster decisions, and shorter development cycles. Volkswagen, like no other company, symbolizes the lethargy of the German economy and business environment.

Hopefully, the seven years with barely any economic growth will end soon.

For some perspective VW Group has around 680k employees per wikipedia [0].

Doubling the estimate from 50k to 100k is pretty wild, though I had read last week it was 100k on the tdi-club forum thread "What's left for Volkswagen?" [1]

[0] en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_Group [1] https://forums.tdiclub.com/index.php?threads/what%E2%80%99s-...

I think with the advent of cheap Chinese electric cars (new BYD for 7-9k€ in China) VW will die a slow death, slowed down by tariffs, tax-paid stimulation programs and bailouts from Germany. They can't compete on price or quality.

I hate that tax money is wasted for this garbage company. Germany and the ECB has been financing VW group by buying their bonds. VW group has hundreds of billions of debt. German Central Bank president recently said (translated): "[It is] currently in the midst of a restructuring process. However, I also see opportunities — for instance, in the defense industry."

Profit margin Volkswagen: 2.21% Profit Margin Toyota: 7.59%

When I compared ICE compact cars some years ago, the Audi A1 (Volkswagen Group) was the only German contender with respect to quality, repair costs, failure statistics, etc. But it lost out to a Toyota, because the Audi was more expensive.

Michael Burry's march BYD analysis was interesting. It said this (and much more): "BYD is potentially the lowest-cost producer of vehicles in the world thanks to its vertically integrated model at scale. BYD controls its supply chains and saves margin at every step. It makes its chips, batteries, bodies, motors, etc. [...] Factories are being built in Thailand, Brazil, Hungary, and Turkey. Europe put a 17% tariff on BYD cars [...]. Once local production is in gear, the tariff will disappear - a major future competitive advantage in Europe given BYD’s low cost advantage. [...] massive overseas spend [...] BYD has ~29% more revenue than Tesla and ~1/12th the market cap."

Chinese car brands are eating the lunch of all the European automakers. They will need to do something to reverse the tide before its too late.

Weak that they’re not partnering with CATL or Panasonic to build stationary storage with excess manufacturing capacity.

People have no money for cars. Maybe boomers whose health insurance you subsidize and whose overpriced apartments you rent can still afford one.

Everyone else struggles with health insurance up more than 100% in 10 years, Döner up 100% in 6 years, electricity costs etc.

But we feel good about the "rules based international order", which only the EU follows right now, dictated by public servants with inflation-indexed pensions.