By Maja Kunert
Published on
Volkswagen, the carmaker based in Wolfsburg, is bracing for an unprecedented upheaval. According to a report in manager magazin citing insiders, chief executive Oliver Blume is planning to cut up to 100,000 of the group’s roughly 657,000 jobs worldwide. That would mean doubling the previous job-cut target: only a few months ago VW announced plans to shed around 50,000 jobs by 2030 – a move that was already seen at the time as historic in its scale.
Blume is said to have already presented the board with a corresponding restructuring plan. According to a second insider, the key document deliberately contains no specific figure in order to leave room for further fine-tuning.
Four plants face closure
In addition to job cuts, four production sites are also to be shut down in the medium term, according to the report in manager magazin. The VW plants in Hanover, Zwickau and Emden, as well as the Audi plant in Neckarsulm in the state of Baden-Württemberg, would be affected. Under the plans, manufacturing at these sites would cease once the models currently built there are phased out. It remains unclear how such massive job cuts could be enforced under labour and collective bargaining law: at Volkswagen, a job guarantee currently runs until the end of 2030, and at Audi even until the end of 2033.
Beyond job cuts, the group is reportedly planning a fundamental overhaul of its structure. Both the core Volkswagen brand and the components division are to be carved out of the group and turned into independent companies. In this logic, individual spun-off brands could in future be placed on the capital market more easily.
Crisis with a long history
The current plans are not a bolt from the blue, but the provisional culmination of a deep-seated structural crisis. In the first quarter of 2026 the group’s net profit slumped by 28 percent to 1.56 billion euros, while revenue fell by two percent to 75.7 billion euros.
At the time, chief financial officer Arno Antlitz issued an unusually blunt warning: “The cost cuts planned so far are not enough. If we fail to achieve this, we risk our future.” On top of that come US tariffs, which according to Antlitz are weighing on the group to the tune of around four billion euros a year. At the same time, VW saw sales in its most important single market, China, drop by 20 percent in the first quarter – with Chinese manufacturers such as BYD not only gaining ground at home but increasingly pushing into Europe as well.
