Car group reports 54% drop in pre-tax profits as it says Iran war could affect demand for Audi and Porsche brands

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.

  • comador @lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    24 hours ago

    OK I don’t know most of those services.
    That’s because they vary from country to country.

    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!

    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.

    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.

    Yup. Again, this is VW getting away with whatever they can where they can.

    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.

    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.

    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.

    I have no excuse for this other than it was an energetic response full of emotion that prevented better articulation lol.

    • Buffalox@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      23 hours ago

      they insisted, even though it was untrue, that VW Flex and SIXT+ were the only options for me to lease

      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.

      Post tax profits dropped? boohooo. Eat shit VW.

      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.