By P Gosselin
VW announces 1000 layoffs at large electric-vehicle plant in East Germany as demand slips and market turbulence persists
Blackout News here reports that Volkswagen is planning to cut another 1,000 jobs by the end of 2024 at its factory in Zwickau, Germany. The demand for electric vehicles (EVs) remains weak and turbulent.
The news is another blow to a region already gripped by economic and political uncertainty, and underscores how Germany’s green master plan remains an illusion.
The Zwickau plant still employs about 9,400 workers and exclusively produces vehicles with electric drives.
“The move is a result of slow sales of EVs,” reports Blackout News. “The automotive industry is currently experiencing a turbulent phase. Many companies are increasingly focusing on electro-mobility, but consumers remain hesitant. High purchase costs, limited range and an inadequate charging infrastructure are some of the reasons that are deterring potential buyers.”
Despite the bad news, Zwickau remains an important location for the production of electric vehicles at VW. How long this will continue as such remains to be seen.
“The cutbacks mainly affect fixed-term employment contracts, which increases uncertainty for many employees. Many employees in Zwickau fear for their future, as fixed-term contracts are expiring and there are no new jobs in sight,” reports Blackout News.
The prospects for the future of electric cars in Germany remains highly uncertain, and will depend on very much on whether or not electric vehicles will ever gain acceptance from wary buyers. issues surrounding technical feasibility still remain unresolved. As much as governments would like to promote them, their technical realities are there and cannot be discussed away.
Blackout News summarizes with optimism: “It can be said that the automotive industry is undergoing a transformation process that harbors both opportunities and risks. VW in Zwickau is an example of the challenges and necessary adjustments in this transition phase.”
Assuming the “transition phase” ever gets completed.
Blackout News is operated by an independent and non-partisan small group of engineers with experience in energy management.
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Producing gasoline including drilling, transporting, refining, distributing, and consuming it is an incredibly efficient process. By far more economically efficient than converting hydrocarbons to electricity in 100’s of $billions of power plants, transporting it to markets in 100’s of $billions of transmission lines, to100’s of $billions of new distribution lines and charge stations, for batteries in vehicles that require 100’s of $billions of subsidizes to replace ICE vehicles. Insane, we need to end this sooner instead of later.
Battery EV’s losing 50 percent of value in three years is an issue, but for buyers like me who like to buy 3-year lease trade-ins and drive them for 3 years, BEV isn’t an option. A $48,000 car depreciating $8,000 per year the first three years to ($24K), and $6,000 per year for the 2nd three years to ($6K) and $2,000 per year during the 3rd three years to ($0k), is costly. $0K because people buying 9-year-old cars don’t have garages and/or don’t want a car that may come up with a dead $15,000 battery in a couple years.
New BEV’s are for the top 10% earners, 3-year-old BEV’s for the next 15%, and an even worse investment for everyone else. The fad is fading. Give it up. Gasoline at $4/gal, makes the cost, complexity, and weight of a hybrid economical, but BEV’s are like ethanol, wind, solar, and grid scale battery storage, “less than wise” .
Not sure about Electric Car Doldrums but Electric Car Drolldumbs is certainly true.
EVs are Droll and Dumb
Any car that refuses to operate without an internet connection is pure idiocy
D, I do not know the cumulative efficiency of the gasoline supply chain, so I cannot agree with or dispute your assertion. I do know it is incredibly efficient to use natural gas (pet peeve, it is NOT all methane) in combined cycle units that run at over 50% efficiency to make electricity. However, I do know the gasoline infrastructure is in place and largely paid for. Abandoning all of those capital costs and putting millions of people out of work replacing something that works well does not make sense to me. And FORCING people to buy e-cars by government edict frosts my cookies.
What this shows more than anything is the inanity of governments meddling in markets like this. If people wanted EVs, they’d tell manufacturers one way or another, the prices would be realistic, customers would buy or not, and you wouldn’t have these idiotic arbitrary jumps in “demand”.
This whole green nonsense is divorced from reality, and reality always wins.
No. A very long list of investments in EV & battery facilities in Europe here:
https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/companies-invest-ev-battery-factories-europe-2023-05-18/
and the US here
https://electrek.co/2023/08/18/us-ev-investments-ira/
That was two years ago. In the UK at the moment, as a for instance:
This is from perplexity.ai, summarizing a bunch of stories along the same lines. People are buying BEVs only because of favorable tax treatment of EV company cars, but private buyers are walking and used prices are falling.
Governments can pass any laws they like and so it may be that the EV market will carry on growing in Europe due to compulsion. But at some point in the near future we will see buyer resistance hit the immovable object of government regulation. Its clear that given the motivation the government regulation will win. But what is not so clear is the unforeseen consequences of victory. For instance, a collapse in the new car market.
If by “winning” you mean “the destruction of the auto industry” with first world nations then mimicking Cuba where old cars are kept going for decades and decades.
Yes. There is a conflict between customer preferences and government policy. The government can and evidently will enforce its policies, it just has to legislate to ban new sales of ICE cars. In effect it in the process of doing that in the UK.
But there will be unforeseen consequences. One of which will be that people will just not buy the only cars that are available to buy new. And this will lead to an auto industry crash. It may not be destroyed, but it will shrink a lot. And you will have a Cuba type situation where people just keep on driving old ICE cars.
I am not sure what the end game of this will be. It may be that if buyer resistance is great enough and the hit to the auto industry great enough that they will blink and relax the ban. Or, maybe buyers will adapt, buy what is available, and change their lifestyles to match. That too will be huge social changes.
One way or another countries are going to have to come to terms with the fact that EVs are not plug compatible replacements for ICE. So if you enforce a move to EVs, something is going to give. It could be sales volumes, it could be way of life. But we are not going to just change the power source and carry on as normal.
The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) recently said sales of pure BEVs in the UK had risen by only 0.6% in the first half of the year compared to 2023 – 16.6% compared to 16.1% in 2023.
That’s wonderful. Now let’s wait a few years and see if they get their money back.
They were destined to fail from the start.
And they have.
Just like you always do.
When governments are stupid enough to mandate the production of one mode of transport over another, manufacturers will milk the artificial market for what it’s worth.
Apparently, all Western governments, now there’s a coincidence.
You didn’t address the problem of government meddling being so arbitrary and reversible, unlike natural free markets. Businesses need time to adjust, to make plans, to build factories.
Politicians act as if the thermometer and thermostat are one and the same. Move the needle, the temperature changes immediately, obediently.
“So shall it be written, so shall it be done.” Pass a law, problem solved.
Real life just doesn’t work that way.
Your references, besides being out of date by 2 years, are all, entirely and everywhere, driven by government bullying and bribing. If the subsidies end tomorrow, so does the so-called EV “market”. That is all.
My reluctance to buy an EV is now made up almost entirely of “Not when the d*** government is pushing it so f***ing hard!!!” Well, that and all the practical reasons that make them far worse than an ICE powered vehicle, and I see no reason to go backward. My current vehicle can travel 600+ miles on a fillup, and from empty to full again is <10 minutes. That distance per tank is barely affected by the temperature, and although it is affected by what I’m towing or hauling, that difference is reliably predictable. But after so much hype from the government, even if an electric vehicle could match that performance, without sacrificing any capacity, and still cost the same without subsidies, I still wouldn’t buy one because the d*** government has pushed them so hard, they have flat p***ed me off. So no deal. If the d*** government mandates that my next purchase must be an electric vehicle, I will continue repairing and even rebuilding (if necessary) my current vehicle until the day I die or I can replace it with another ICE powered vehicle, whichever comes first. As another commenter hinted, Cuba much?
VW may well be selling fewer electric cars, but world sales of electric cars go from strength to strength, as they get cheaper and better (faster charging, longer range). If one was to only read electric car info on this site, you would assume demand was collapsing. Not so. Keep those thumbs down coming!
The world’s electric car fleet continues to grow strongly, with 2024 sales set to reach 17 million – News – IEA
And yet, investment in EVs is declining, not increasing.
If the future belonged to EVs, the companies would be fighting for the market.
Instead, they are giving the market to the Chinee and concentrating on their own future. Which does not involve further investment in EVs.
Do you have a source for that? All the sources I have looked at, and there are many, show that investments in EV and Battery facilities are increasing in all major markets. One such source is comprehensive EV outlook for 2024, by the IEA
Global EV Outlook 2024 – Analysis – IEA
Outlook… roflmao.
EV sales are falling far, far short of any of their “fantasy” outlooks.
Have you bought yours yet..
Have you thrown away your “unemployable” money on a wasted, throwaway product ??
Or are you just another mindless hypocritical shill?
A recent report from the International Energy Forum (May 2024) entitled ‘Copper Mining and Vehicle Electrification’ notes that a typical BEV requires 60 kgs of copper compared to 24kgs for an ICE car.
Given the copper requirements of concurrent electrification of grids and targets for EV only sales from a certain date the report seriously doubts that enough new copper mines can be brought into operation to meet the demand.
That popularity of which you speak Tony, is not being reflected in actuality is it?
I am sure there is a good market for EVs but it will not be the total market that government’s across the world are demanding it must be.
The lack of sense on display is evident of Totalitarian policies now far too common across world governments.
The market for EVs only exists because of favourable tax treatment, level the playing field, and it would cease to exist.
Governments will just boost the subsidy on EVs and increase the taxes on ICEs. The revenue will never match the subsidies.
Cheaper?
It’s July 14th not April 1st
What a gullible little twerp you keep proving yourself to be.
Tell us toxic, have you brought your EV yet?
Or are you just another hypocritical mindless twerp.
Your link contains pie-in-the-sky fantasy thinking and other gormless idiocies.
No wonder you fell for it. !
Propaganda. The IEA are gaslighting you. Try searching youtube for “EV sales” and see how many positive videos you find.
From your link:
Again, a skewed market prediction based on a government mandate.
Consumers would vote with their wallets if they had a choice
still lots of wealthy people- the low hanging fruit- the “masses” aren’t going to buy them
In Texas, for FY23 (FY ending 8/31/2023) there were 25,904,683 total vehicles registered. Of those, 591,794 (2.28%) were alternate fueled vehicles (AFV). This includes hydrogen – yes there was 1 hydrogen powered vehicle registered in Texas. Of that 591,794 AFV, 410,330 (1.58% of total vehicles) were gasoline hybrids. BEVs were 175,497 or 0.68% of the total. In FY22, the AFV fleet was 1.79% of the total fleet. Of course, a rise to 2.28% is a 27% increase in that rate. Meaningless. With number so low, any increase appears “large”. There is no significant demand for BEVs. Without the incentives and subsidies, virtue signaling is not a long-term motivation for buying something so useless and harmful.
https://www.txdmv.gov/sites/default/files/report-files/FY-2023-Alternatively-Fueled-Vehicle-Report.pdf
As detailed so well in yesterday’s article about the history of EVs. The ‘transition’ is now 130 years old, I am sure it will get popular traction eventually….
Did VW but know it, Ed Miliband has the genius to put them straight. / sarc
From the above article:
“High purchase costs, limited range and an inadequate charging infrastructure are some of the reasons that are deterring potential buyers.”
Ummm . . . what about the high cost of grid electricity for residents in Germany, which now averages around 0.44 USD per kWh? This compares to average residential consumer electricity price in the US now being about 0.17 USD per kWh.
If one topped off a Tesla Model S (or Model X) with 100 kWh battery pack from an 80% depth-of-discharge, assuming 95% charging efficiency, the equivalent cost would be about 37 USD. The cost for charging EVs at commercial charging stations in Germany is sure to be higher. Yikes!
And, in northern California, the PG&E rates are $0.39, and $0.486 per kWhr over baseline.
So, a 100kWhr Tesla battery will cost $48.60 [ using tier 2] for about 330 miles or $0.147 per mile, and a lot more if using a public charger, some at $0.50+ per kWhr.
My 30 mpg Chevy using the current $3.89 per gallon, costs me $0.129 per mile.
I see a lot of Tesla here, and they are more of a status symbol, like driving other ‘exotic’ cars, like a Lamborghini, Ferrari,Maserati, etc., than a ‘save the planet’ purchase.
I don’t think they know what it costs to drive, and probably don’t care.!
This and other ev fails are all the fault of Toyota and it’s anti-ev funding:
https://www.theverge.com/2021/7/26/22594235/toyota-lobbying-dc-ev-congress-biden-donation
https://www.quora.com/Are-you-aware-that-Toyota-does-more-anti-EV-lobbying-than-any-other-car-manufacturer-in-the-world-Why-would-anyone-hold-stock-in-a-company-set-on-only-growing-its-share-of-a-declining-market-and-not-participating-in
End sarc and tin foil hat wearing…
What a shame that the East German workers paradise collapsed which allowed the greedy western capitalists to run their factories into the ground which now requires all these layoffs.
This is all Reagan’s fault.
No more clear example of just how bad a command and control economy is. Worthless pieces of crap bureaucrats thinking they know better than the market. It’s no wonder they have to use force to stay in business/power.
Assuming the “transition phase” ever gets completed.
I wouldn’t rush with the EVs-
Australia’s creaking power grid is thwarting renewables and pushing up prices (msn.com)
They’ll be rolling with coal and gas for a while.
America tried battery cars decades ago. They failed.