By P Gosselin on 30. October 2024
After its politically driven foray into electric vehicles, Volkswagen is facing significant financial challenges…plans to close at least three of its German factories…unprecedented move in the company’s history…. tens of thousands of jobs will be lost!
Anti-auto green party activist, liberal arts college-dropout on the supervisory board!
The news for VW is real bad, and now the powerful IG Metall engineering and metal workers’ union is already hinting at strikes to prevent the cuts. Additionally, the company is looking to cut more than $4.3 billion in costs
Hat-tip: Aktienmitkopf.
Misguided foray into electric vehicles
But don’t start feeling sorry for VW. The problems are largely self-made by incompetent managers and politicians.
Firstly, the German state of Lower Saxony, where VW is headquartered in Wolfsburg, owns approximately 20% of Volkswagen. Then, secondly, in the late 2010s, VW began its earnest push into electric vehicle production with the introduction of its ID family of electric cars. The increased focus on electric vehicles was largely politically driven by factors like increasingly stringent emissions standards and overly optimistic future demand for electric vehicles.
EV car sales stall, plant closure
However, VW electric vehicle sales have since taken a turn for the worst. EVs aren’t popular in Germany. Their sales in the first half of 2024 were approximately 317,200 units worldwide, lower than the same period in 2023 (321,600 EVs). The future of EV sales now looks bleak: Volkswagen just announced the closure of its Audi Brussels plant in Belgium, which primarily produces electric vehicles. This decision comes due to lower-than-expected demand for electric vehicles and is expected to take effect in February 2025.
Green Party anti-auto activist, college dropout on VW supervisory board!
And if you think VW being owned by a green-leaning state is already problematic for the management of the company, take a look at who sits on the company’s supervisory board: Julia Willie Hamburg, a German politician from Alliance 90/The Greens, Ms. Hamburg also serves as the Deputy Minister-President of Lower Saxony and the State Minister for Education and Culture.
Now let’s look at her qualifications: According to her resume, Ms. Hamburg was educated in Hanover where she studied political science, German philology, and then studied philosophy at the University of Göttingen.
She dropped out of all her studies without a degree. Moreover, she’s an anti-car activist who travels by bicycle. She has neither industrial management experience, financial expertise nor an inkling of automotive engineering. That folks, is one of the top executives at VW. No joke!
So, don’t be surprised if VW gets its clock cleaned by the competition over the next few years.
All of the advanced western economies have been replacing their leaderships with people who couldn’t manage a lemonade stand. The results are totally predictable. We’re now entering mid-stage Atlas Shrugged.
Manage? They could not produce potable lemonade with pre-squeezed lemons.
If the electric Scout re-incarnation ever makes it to market, it will be interesting to see how well it performs in an off-road environment. I suspect that a lot of battery spot-welds will pop from the pounding, and it will be interesting to see what happens to the battery and wheel motors if the owner tries a deep crossing of a creek. Are the motors hermetically sealed and how much pressure can they take before allowing silty water to get into them? What will happen to the cars if driven on an ocean beach, or after a few years of driving on Rust Belt roads in the Winter?