Europe’s largest automaker, Volkswagen, is to shed 50,000 jobs by the end of the decade, as it faces falling sales in China and North America and punitive US tariffs imposed by Donald Trump.
The 10-brand group, whose luxury subsidiaries Porsche and Audi are also under pressure, said the jobs would go in Germany, affecting the entire group, as part of a restructuring drive in light of the darkening global business climate.
The group had already struck a deal with German trade unions at the end of 2024 to slash 35,000 jobs by 2030, in part by natural attrition through retirement and other staff departures.
May VW go bankrupt on its own lies and subscriptions.
And the world invests in public transit in a really big, unprecedented manner asap.
What subscriptions?
Regarding the lies I suspect you mean diesel-gate. Yes diesel-gate was because the test was rigged, which can be called a form of lie, but everybody did it, so why target VW in particular?
There is a “subscription” to the App for my ID.4, but it’s free, so what is the problem?
The brands that have really aired the idea of subscriptions is BMW and Stelantis, but maybe you are just confused?
What does the app allow you to do. My Mercedes can open and close windows amongst various other things but only if you pay a subscription. 😞
What’s worse is it has a dash cam built in but you have to pay £200 to unlock it. Yet I bought this car used and presumably the previous owner had that as it was specced out, but as it changed hands I’d have to pay. That said I love the car and the quality is great.
My app is extremely limited, I can see charging state, and plan charging, and it has a map where I can see where the car is, and I can turn air condition on and off or set a timer/planner for it. Then there is a health report with a lot of status items.
I don’t think it gets much more basic than that.
PS: It also has some sort of roadside assistance, but the one through my insurance is way better. The one VW offer also seems to be limited to if there are injuries. But why would I call them for that?
Finally there’s a number to a help line. Which I’ve never used.
The only thing I have missed, and only once, is the ability to lock the doors.
Open and close windows could probably be nice in the summer, (We bought ours November 2025) but we have dark rear window and in rear doors too, so it shouldn’t get too hot if parked correctly, and the air-condition is very efficient. It does however have a function to control all 4 windows at the same time.
Despite the simplistic app, we are very happy with our ID.4. There are so many clever little details, including how many of the automatic features work. Lighting up the surrounding when you get out if it’s just a little dark, lights in the cabin when you park, how the fob turn on the screen before you get to the car. Phantom pedal for the trunk. The convenience of the HUD. The fully automatic climate control, which I didn’t even touch for months after we bought the car, because it was just right.
But to be fair, our old car was rather old, so this is a HUGE step up. Despite out old car was also a very nice car with full leather cabin.
I bet a Mercedes beat it, but we don’t drive enough to justify buying a Mercedes on our budget.
USA, any VW dealership:
Lies:
Take your pick. VW has been failing for so long that they moved to subscriptions to pick up the bottom line from their remaining customers, then complain no one wants their vehicles.
VW: Once the king of affordable and reliable, now just garbage.
May they fail miserably and fade into obscurity in my lifetime.
Sincerely, a VW hater since Dieselgate.
But all Diesel manufacturers faked emissions data. All of them.
Then fuck them all. The individuals involved, just “following orders” or giving them, should have all been charged with fraud.
OK I don’t know most of those services.
VW Flex is a car rental service, or some sort of car sharing program, why are you mad that VW offer such a service? If you don’t want it, you are 100% free not to rent a car from VW or anyone else.
SIXT isn’t even VW but BMW!
I can see you may have a point about some of the other items.
But here we don’t have those, but the app is also very limited here, and I cannot lock the doors of my car remotely, something I found weird, since it must be extremely easy to make.
Navigation is however included without charge. And there are no subscriptions.
Regarding Dieselgate that’s moronic, VW was just unlucky to be the first that was caught, all the other manufacturers of diesel cars did the exaxt same thing, and VW wasn’t even the worst.
I have no idea what the points below are supposed to be about. Except VW works fine with unions in Europe, but USA has no protections of unions, so blame your government and fellow Americans for that one too. Absolutely fight for unions, If I were American I would support a unionized brand as well.
You make some good points, but I don’t get why you start out with points in both sections that seem pretty stupid non issues, apart from diesel-gate of course being an issue, but since everybody did it, you can’t really use that for anything.
When I briefly looked at an ID.4 and ID Buzz they insisted, even though it was untrue, that VW Flex and SIXT+ were the only options for me to lease… SIXT+ is used here for Porsche and certain VW models, but is more a rental service than a leasing service. That’s definitely true.
Yup. Again, this is VW getting away with whatever they can where they can.
Well, I have family in Frankfurt, DE that also hates VW as of late. They just announced for example they’re laying 50k people off worldwide… not because they’re suffering, but because of lower than expected profits. Post tax profits dropped? boohooo. Eat shit VW.
I have no excuse for this other than it was an energetic response full of emotion that prevented better articulation lol.
That’s such a despicable salesman trick, I almost completely lost respect for a friend once, when I found out he did something almost identical to his customers.
IDK if it is company policy for VW to do that, it could be the salesperson.
It’s a capitalist world we live in, but unfortunately of all the models we have tried, democracy with regulated capitalism seems to be the least bad model we have figured out how to make work somewhat reasonably.
That said profits are necessary for future investments, without profits the company dies. That would be true even if society wasn’t capitalistic. Then the resources for investments in maintenance and improvements would just have to come from somewhere else.