It got vetoed by Qatar (their SWF owns 17% of all voting shares in Volkswagen) because that would have meant working with Israeli companies [0] despite Germany being dependent on the Israeli Arrow system [1] to counter Russian systems.
Now that factory (Osnabrueck) is one of the factories on the chopping block.
And this is why Volkswagen is going to be a slow moving train crash - Lower Saxony, the Qatari royal family, the Pötsch/Porsche family, and IG Metall are not aligned.
alt Hacker News
> switching some lines to building military
It got vetoed by Qatar (their SWF owns 17% of all voting shares in Volkswagen) because that would have meant working with Israeli companies [0] despite Germany being dependent on the Israeli Arrow system [1] to counter Russian systems.
Now that factory (Osnabrueck) is one of the factories on the chopping block.
And this is why Volkswagen is going to be a slow moving train crash - Lower Saxony, the Qatari royal family, the Pötsch/Porsche family, and IG Metall are not aligned.
[0] - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-07-10/qatar-blo...
[1] - https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/germany-d...