VW is just one of the companies aiming to reduce staff as it invests billions toward transitioning to EVs.
Calling its current operations uncompetitive and costs unnecessarily high, Volkswagen CEO Thomas Schafer announced during a staff meeting at the company’s Wolfsburg headquarters and on its internal website that it would reduce headcount in a market where it’s “no longer competitive”.
Per Reuters, the brand’s chief aims to cut costs by up to 10 billion Euros ($10.9 billion). However, human resources board member Gunnar Kilian said the downsizing would come through “measures other than personnel reduction”, including buyouts and early retirement packages, rather than involuntary severances. Depending on how VW carries that out, the move sounds familiar to a similar scheme Stellantis reportedly carried out to cut costs in amidst a tough market with high transaction prices and cooling demand — particularly for EVs.
“We need to finally be brave and honest enough to throw things overboard that are being duplicated within the company or are simply ballast we don’t need for good results,” Kilian said during the meeting. In the same vein, Schafer said to employees: “With many of our pre-existing structures, processes and high costs, we are no longer competitive as the Volkswagen brand.”
We obviously won’t know the fallout from VW’s downsizing immediately. With rumblings of automakers throughout the industry similarly curbing costs to absorb the impact of manufacturing EVs, we could see more stories like this crop up in the near future.
