The crisis of the Volkswagen group continues to hold sway in European newspapers. In Germany, criticism is raining down on the national manufacturer for the delay in investments, the problems with the quality of the cars and the wrong market forecasts. Complicating the situation is the trade war between Europe and China, formalized by the entry into force of duties on electric cars produced in Chinese territory.
The German unions have been on a war footing for weeks, but now their actions also end up in the dock. On the one hand there is the problem of the absolute number of Volkswagen employees, higher than any other car manufacturer in the world, on the other there is that of the cost of labour, protected over the years by the powerful union IG Metal through particularly generous collective agreements.
These costs inevitably affect the industrial competitiveness of the company, which is unable to produce cheap electric cars like those of other manufacturers. We are talking about the future ID.2, which should not have a price lower than 30,000 euros.
23
Own goal?
Furthermore, according to a reconstruction by colleagues of Engine1 Germanyit would have been the same union that blocked the industrialization of a low-cost city car, to be developed by exploiting economies of scale together with the Renault Group in the Twingo project.
The German manufacturer reportedly withdrew from the collaboration due to union pressure admitted by it Daniela Cavallopresident of the VW Works Council, who declared in an official text, reported at the bottom of the article: “For the cornerstone of our electric strategy, i.e. the brand’s future small car, we wanted to launch ourselves against the competition and have it built by Dacia” .
The interview with Daniela Cavallo, president of the VW Works Council, with the highlighted passage
The union’s goal was to preserve production in Germany, given that the Twingo will be carried out in Slovenia, but the result is not as hoped. The German compact car, together with others from the VW group such as the Cupra Raval and Skoda Epiq, will in fact find its cradle in Spain, precisely in Pamplona, in the factory dedicated until now to the Polo (which in the meantime is moving to South Africa).
Meanwhile, Renault is moving forward with the project, to offer the car in 2026 at a price of 20,000 euros and face rivals such as Dacia Spring and Leapmotor T03, sold in Italy at 17,900 euros. A panorama where other “economical” electric vehicles such as the Fiat Grande Panda and Citroen e-C3 fit in.
24
Password: “speed”
Above all, the affair highlights how structural the problem is of the European car industry, in particular the German one, whose competitiveness is undermined by a stratification of constraints, costs and positional rents that make any process slow and complicated. of transformation. In a moment of transition in which the watchword should be only one: “speed”.
Source: it.motor1.com
