Volkswagen selling out to China
German automakers are looking to the sky right now. But it's not drones over New Jersey that the Deutsch are worried about, it's Chinese electric vehicle makers circling over their European plants like vultures, ready to sink their teeth into idled plants while the machinery is still warm.Yet these same labor unions reportedly have nothing against producing cars for a joint venture with China. That too is saying quite a bit about where this could end up going. Well I'm not sorry VW's fortunes are dwindling, but that still doesn't make this alliance acceptable. Maybe it's just one more reason why anybody who's bought VW cars and trucks before should stop doing so now.
See, China's automakers are in a frenzy to expand right now. With fears that external growth could be extremely limited over the second half of the decade due to tariffs, OEMs are exploring what it would take to set up shop abroad. And what better way to do that than pick up shop and drop into an already purpose-built factory, especially when it's from an automaker that's in trouble and needs to offload some assets?
One company in China's crosshairs is Volkswagen. The people's car company is having a bit of a cost crisis right now. And as part of a larger corporate cost restructuring—or, as CEO Thomas Schafer calls it, the company's "new realities"—VW announced that they would shutter “at least three" factories in Germany late last year. After pressure from labor unions, VW backed down on the outright closing of plants. Instead, the agreement reached just before Christmas was to idle only two plants through 2027 and instead seek alternative use for the selected factories in Dresden (where the ID 3 is built) and Osnabrueck (home of the T-Roc Cabrio). More than 2,500 workers are expected to be impacted.
Labels: China, communism, germany, Moonbattery, political corruption