alt Hacker NewsIt is unfortunate for the employees but it is necessary, and hopefully also a wake up call for other German companies and the government.
It’s time for leaner structures, smaller teams, faster decisions, and shorter development cycles. Volkswagen, like no other company, symbolizes the lethargy of the German economy and business environment.
Hopefully, the seven years with barely any economic growth will end soon.
> Volkswagen, like no other company, symbolizes the lethargy of the German economy and business environment
A car development cycle is/was seven years in Germany. And that was totally fine. When the "Golf 7" comes up, the "Golf 8" doesn't come out only 2 years after.
What happened is the EU (and Germany in particular) left only two development cycles to the biggest industry in Germany (and hence the biggest industry in Europe) to entirely change.
For the EU said: "In 14 years you're forbidden to sell a single brand new ICE car in the EU" (of course they recently changed that tune, but too little, too late, the damage is done).
But that's not all: not happy to drown the german car industry, they decided that the corpse wasn't drowning quickly enough and Germany decided to shut down all their nuclear reactors (I think they recently reversed their stance on that too) and become depending on Russia as a major energy source (which the US warned Europe / Germany to not do).
Of course the shit hit the fan: Russia attacked Ukraine and everything turned to shit.
And now it's estimated German car makers pay their energy price 7x more than was chinese car makers pay their energy.
So, no, it's not all "the lethargy of German economy and business". Germany was (and to some extent still is) producing incredibly fine driving machines: not just VW but Audi, Porsche, BMW and Mercedes.
And those cars did what was asked of cars: drive very finely.
It's eurocrats/bureaucrats and german politicians who killed the german car industry.
P.S: I've got nothing against EVs... But don't be an ideological idiot about it: don't kill your main industry while handing the keys of the kingdown to China. The shift was way too quick. The EU should have been way more cautious and shouldn't have stupidly closed so many nuclear plants (to moreover start burning more coal again).