Diess and Brandstatter hold a crisis meeting with 120 area managers in an attempt to save VW:
https://news.in-24.com/business/189808.htmlCompared to Tesla and Chinese manufacturers, VW is too expensive and slow, both emphasized. Now it is a matter of taking up the “fight against Grünheide”. Grünheide is the site of Giga Berlin.
Thursday evening at 5 p.m. in the factory forum in Wolfsburg. VW boss Herbert Diess and brand boss Ralf Brandstätter stand side by side on the stage. It’s serious. The brand and the group are coming under increasing pressure on the world market. The world’s largest car manufacturer is not only lagging behind its competitors when it comes to electrification and digitization. VW is also losing ground when it comes to productivity. If everything stays the same, so the haunting words of Diess, VW will no longer be competitive.It looks like VW's active management know what is going on although whether the same thoughts are with the board, the 120 area managers, unions and employees is far from clear.
Diess is trying to get a new much more advanced factory built with many more radical ideas and increases in production performance. In essence Diess wants VW to become a 'start-up' developing essentially new technology and new production methods and to do it all quickly or face oblivion as a car manufacturer of yesteryear.
This lack of VW competitiveness should come as no surprise to any reader of this board, the big question is whether DIess can turn the ship around before it hits the iceberg which many of the VW board still do not see. Given what Diess said the shares of VW look massively over priced to me. To do what he wants will require a lot of capital and it will require tame unions, a tame board and tame politicians, none of these groups are noted for being quiet and constructive.
Diess notes:
A Tesla 3 is built in ten hours, more than three times as fast as a VW ID.3 in Zwickau. This puts Tesla in a different dimension when it comes to productivity and profitability.One should also remember that VW are the most advanced of the legacy car makers in their move to electrification. Ford are beginning to act, but most of the others are assuming that ICE and/or PHEV will carry on at current or better levels for decades to come and are not concerned about the Chinese car markers who Diess says are producing cars at a much faster rate. Meanwhile Toyota are fixated on hydrogen with no obvious ways to economically make the hydrogen or create the fuelling infrastructure.
Regards,
