VW Union Head Warns 3 Plants Closing, Thousands In Layoffs, Amid Auto Crisis
VW Union Head Warns 3 Plants Closing, Thousands In Layoffs, Amid Auto Crisis
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/this-is-starvation-vw-...;
BY TYLER DURDEN
MONDAY, OCT 28
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Before 2020, Germany was riding high, because it was getting abundant, reliable, low-cost gas from Russia under long-term contracts
However, the ENERGIEWENDE kept on increasing electricity prices to the highest $/kWh in Europe
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Germany was told by the US the four gas pipelines under the Baltic Sea, carrying Russian gas, would be blown up in late 2022, because the US wanted the EU to be dependent on US LNG, which was up to 50% more costly than Russian pipeline gas.
The Germany industrial sector was screwed big time.
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Expensive Energy and Energiewende are like Oil and Water
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Europe's largest carmaker, expected to report dismal third-quarter results on Wednesday, has been crushed by the auto market downturn while competition intensifies from China.
On Monday, Volkswagen's top labor leader, works council chief Daniela Cavallo, who also sits on VW's supervisory board, was quoted by Bloomberg as saying three factories are slated for closures.
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Cavallo warned that tens of thousands of jobs could be eliminated, and remaining workers could face 10% pay cuts and scaled-back hours.
"This means taking out even more products, quantities, shifts and entire assembly lines far beyond what we have already done so far," Cavallo told factory workers earlier today, adding, "This is starvation, a weakening in installments."
German VW plants. The orange icon are component plants, while blue icon are manufacturing ones.
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Cavallo said cost-cutting measures may threaten "tens of thousands" of jobs in Germany.
She noted, Porsche, owned by WV, has already canceled its production deal and future model planning at the Osnabrück factory.
VW has ten plants and employs 300,000 workers across Germany, the economic powerhouse in the bloc. Potential job loss for VW workers comes amid numerous profit warnings in recent months and mounting union fights.
We've been extensively covering the dire situation unfolding at VW:
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- Sept. 03: Volkswagen Considers First-Ever Germany Factory Closures As Economi...
- Sept. 10: Volkswagen Declares War On Unions, Scraps Three-Decade-Old Job Prot...
- Sept. 27: Volkswagen Cuts Profit Forecast Again Amid Sliding Car Demand
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VW's restructuring would be historic and mark the first closure of German-based plants in the company's 87-year history.
This comes amid intensifying competition from China and slowing auto sales across the West.
The transition to EV has proved nothing short of disastrous, leaving VW with little choice but to push itself into restructure mode.
VW should've concentrated on gasoline and diesel cars, instead of losing $billions/y building EVs
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Anti-auto green party activist, liberal arts college-dropout on the supervisory board!
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The news for VW is real bad, and now the powerful IG Metall engineering and metal workers’ union is already hinting at strikes to prevent the cuts.
Additionally, the company is looking to cut more than $4.3 billion in costs
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Misguided foray into EVs
But don’t start feeling sorry for VW.
The problems are largely self-inflicted by incompetent managers and politicians.
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Firstly, the German state of Lower Saxony, where VW is headquartered in Wolfsburg, owns approximately 20% of Volkswagen.
Secondly, in the late 2010s, VW began its earnest push into EV production with the introduction of its ID family of electric cars.
The increased focus on electric vehicles was largely politically driven by factors like increasingly stringent emissions standards and overly optimistic future demand for electric vehicles.
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EV car sales stall, plant closure
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However, EV sales have since taken a turn for the worst.
EVs aren’t popular in Germany.
Their sales in the first half of 2024 were approximately 317,200 units worldwide, lower than the same period in 2023 (321,600 EVs).
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The future of EV sales now looks bleaker than a few years ago.
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Volkswagen just announced the closure of its Audi Brussels plant in Belgium, which primarily produces EVs, due to lower-than-expected demand for EVs. It will take effect in February 2025.
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Green Party anti-auto activist, college dropout on VW supervisory board!
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If you think VW being owned by a green-leaning state is already problematic for the management of the company, take a look at who sits on the company’s supervisory board
Julia Willie Hamburg, a German politician from Alliance 90/The Greens.
Ms. Hamburg also serves as the Deputy Minister-President of Lower Saxony and the State Minister for Education and Culture.
Her qualifications: According to her resume, Ms. Hamburg was educated in Hanover, where she studied political science, German philology (the structure, historical development, and relationships of a language or languages). and then studied philosophy at the University of Göttingen.
She dropped out of all her studies without a degree.
Moreover, she’s an anti-car activist who travels by bicycle.
She has neither industrial management experience, financial expertise, nor an inkling of automotive engineering.
That folks, is one of the top executives at VW. No joke!
So, don’t be surprised, if VW gets its clock cleaned by Tesla, etc., over the next few years.
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Go Woke, Go Broke: Ford Announces Mind-Boggling $100,000 Loss on Each EV Sold in 2024
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/go-woke-go-broke-ford-...
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Affordability, Charging-Infrastructure, & Range-Anxiety Continue To Keep Americans From Embracing EVs
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/affordability-charging...
BY TYLER DURDEN
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While the US and the EU look at different ways to add tariffs to China-made electric vehicles to prevent supply disruption, the reality is, overall demand for EVs is starting to peak.
Such was the topic of a new FT report that looked into why Americans aren't buying more electric vehicles.
“It’s just not accessible to us at this point in our life,” one couple told FT, who said they were looking for a more affordable vehicle.
They went with a $19,000 Honda Accord after a trade-in, since only five new EV models under $40,000 have hit the market in 2024, the report says.
A number of factors have decreased buying of EVs, including among environmentally conscious consumers. Various sources, including FT reported about the following issues:
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1) high EV prices (increase monthly lease payments),
2) high financing interest rates (increase monthly lease payments),
3) short driving range,
4) lack of charging infrastructure,
5) high insurance cost,
6) high on-the-road charging cost
7) time wasted sitting in vehicle while charging; it takes 5 minutes to fill a gas tank to get about 500 miles of driving, but it take at least 1 to 2 hours to fast-charge a EV battery to get 250 miles of driving
That waste is enormous, if you multiply that time by millions of EVs charged per day.
That waste will make the US worker less productive, further lower his standard of living.
8) high repair and bodyshop cost, and long times for bodyshops to get parts
9) very low resale/trade-in value,
10) low-range during hot and cold weather, especially with a few passengers and some luggage
11) more rapid wear of tires and brakes and expensive replacement cost
12) spending at least "$15000 + labor + hazardous landfill charge" to replace an EV battery in an 8-y-old car
13) worrying about having enough charge, and where to charge, when making a longer trip from A to B
14) worrying about the battery catching fire, while parked in the garage, or on the road
15) inability for an EV to tow almost anything for some distance, without having to recharge along the way
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Everett Eissenstat, a former senior US Trade Representative told FT: “There is no question, this list of woes is an explanation of the very slow EV adoption in the US and in Europe. We are just not producing EVs consumers need at prices plus other costs, they can afford”. That meager result is after more than 10 years of high subsidies, and Media hype.
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Maine as Third World Country:
CMP Transmission Rate Skyrockets 19.6% Due to Wind Power
Click here to read how the Maine ratepayer has been sold down the river by the Angus King cabal.
Maine Center For Public Interest Reporting – Three Part Series: A CRITICAL LOOK AT MAINE’S WIND ACT
******** IF LINKS BELOW DON'T WORK, GOOGLE THEM*********
(excerpts) From Part 1 – On Maine’s Wind Law “Once the committee passed the wind energy bill on to the full House and Senate, lawmakers there didn’t even debate it. They passed it unanimously and with no discussion. House Majority Leader Hannah Pingree, a Democrat from North Haven, says legislators probably didn’t know how many turbines would be constructed in Maine if the law’s goals were met." . – Maine Center for Public Interest Reporting, August 2010 https://www.pinetreewatchdog.org/wind-power-bandwagon-hits-bumps-in-the-road-3/From Part 2 – On Wind and Oil Yet using wind energy doesn’t lower dependence on imported foreign oil. That’s because the majority of imported oil in Maine is used for heating and transportation. And switching our dependence from foreign oil to Maine-produced electricity isn’t likely to happen very soon, says Bartlett. “Right now, people can’t switch to electric cars and heating – if they did, we’d be in trouble.” So was one of the fundamental premises of the task force false, or at least misleading?" https://www.pinetreewatchdog.org/wind-swept-task-force-set-the-rules/From Part 3 – On Wind-Required New Transmission Lines Finally, the building of enormous, high-voltage transmission lines that the regional electricity system operator says are required to move substantial amounts of wind power to markets south of Maine was never even discussed by the task force – an omission that Mills said will come to haunt the state.“If you try to put 2,500 or 3,000 megawatts in northern or eastern Maine – oh, my god, try to build the transmission!” said Mills. “It’s not just the towers, it’s the lines – that’s when I begin to think that the goal is a little farfetched.” https://www.pinetreewatchdog.org/flaws-in-bill-like-skating-with-dull-skates/
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Hannah Pingree on the Maine expedited wind law
Hannah Pingree - Director of Maine's Office of Innovation and the Future
"Once the committee passed the wind energy bill on to the full House and Senate, lawmakers there didn’t even debate it. They passed it unanimously and with no discussion. House Majority Leader Hannah Pingree, a Democrat from North Haven, says legislators probably didn’t know how many turbines would be constructed in Maine."
https://pinetreewatch.org/wind-power-bandwagon-hits-bumps-in-the-road-3/
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