10:38 am, July 10, 2026
Volkswagen will be drastically cutting its model line-up and capacity as it looks to improve profitability at the company.
Its executive board held a meeting last night in which CEO and chairman Oliver Blume talked through his plans for the company to its supervisory board, but many questions about staff and factories have been left unanswered leading to protests.
Unions believe that the numbers could be as high as 100,000 jobs lost and Reuters’ sources have said Blume is considering shutting its Hanover, Emden, Zwickau and Neckarsulm plants.
Blume said they would be focussing on the most attractive car segments and plan to streamline the model line-up by up to 50%.
It will also be looking to reduce complexity, which means equipment options will be reduced by up to 75%.
The cuts are not exclusive to Volkswagen, and Audi and Porsche will also be included.
Volkswagen has found itself in a bad place in recent years, most notably with company shares losing more than half their value in the last three years. It’s faced a range of challenges with rising Chinese competition, US import taxes and changes to regulations seriously hitting its profit margin.
Blume said that the global situation had ‘the global situation has continued to change dramatically’ and that’s why they needed to act now.
COO Arno Antlitz added that the cost reduction plan the business already had in place don’t go far enough and said they needed to ‘fundamentally realign our business model’ rather than just keep cost cutting.
