AWhen the Volkswagen supervisory board met on Friday morning in the Wolfsburg brand high-rise, there were tough days ahead for the group. IT boss Hauke Stars has to explain to the assembled inspectors how the serious network breakdown could have occurred, according to company circles.
A server malfunction brought the global production network to a standstill for many hours this week. Bit by bit, IT specialists solved the problem, which particularly reverberated in the main plant. On Friday morning it was also said there: work on the lines was running “largely problem-free” again.
The incident overshadowed the meeting, which was already in a delicate phase. Due to the weak economy and the expiry of subsidies for electric cars, a number of plants are underutilized. VW had already corrected its annual delivery targets in the first half of the year. Now it’s time for the planning round in November, the tug-of-war over investments and plant occupancies that raises the pulse of the group year after year. This time especially because efficiency programs are starting for the corporate brands, especially for the VW brand, which is expected to improve its earnings by 10 billion euros.
Supervisory board distributes models
As part of the overall plan, the supervisory board is now clarifying the first burning location questions. As VW announced on Friday afternoon, the Wolfsburg main plant, which is currently underutilized, is to get another electric car. In addition to the ID.3 compact car, which will roll off the assembly line from next year, a fully electric SUV is expected to come into the factory from 2026, comparable to the Tiguan combustion engine model that Wolfsburg is already producing today.
In addition, management is publicly announcing for the first time that it will release an electric successor to the long-standing bestseller Golf on a new platform. This follows CEO Oliver Blume’s strategy of relying more on well-known models in e-mobility instead of designing completely new cars like the ID line.
After the supervisory board meeting, Thomas Schäfer, head of the VW brand, emphasized that the new plant occupancy makes a “substantial contribution to a strong, competitive” brand. By this he means that Wolfsburg has a better chance of working efficiently with the new compact models.
He did not comment on further savings or efficiency measures. According to reports, Schäfer wants to present an overall plan in October, which has also been agreed with the works council. Its chairwoman Daniela Cavallo said on Friday that the current decisions offer “the best possible economic occupancy of the factories”. With this in mind, we are now tackling the next stages of the planning round, as well as the “performance program” for the brand. It has been clear for some time that this is also about socially acceptable job cuts.
As has been rumored for months, VW is canceling plans for a completely new factory complex at the site. This was decided under former CEO Herbert Diess, but is no longer considered economically justifiable under the given market conditions.
The associated vehicle – known under the project name Trinity – could possibly go to the Zwickau location. This is about the year 2028 or later. According to the announcement, the small Osnabrück vehicle factory can expect further models from Porsche. As the FAZ reported, it is about electric successors to the 718 series, which includes the Boxster and Cayman variants.
Blume’s board of directors said in a statement that the management presented the supervisory board on Friday with “decisions on how to efficiently allocate vehicles to the plants.” In Germany, these primarily affect the Wolfsburg, Hanover, Osnabrück, Zwickau, Ingolstadt and Neckarsulm locations. It also included the locations in Wrzesnia and Poznań in Poland, Bratislava in Slovakia and Brussels in Belgium. The company’s board of directors did not comment in more detail.
With the decisions made, “basic capacity utilization and economic prospects for the coming years have been achieved”. In the next step, the necessary budgets would be defined and allocated during the planning round.
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