It's easy to pick on VW for past mistakes, lousy investments, and inertia. The real question is how to overcome the inertia and the friction of current German laws to reinvent the business. It really comes down to the value of the finished product. I for one do not trust VW quality after years of anecdotal evidence from friends. It's better for Europe that they survive, but not at the company's current size. "Hey, let's make a smaller, cheaper, functional People's Car!"
VW made the mistake of putting too many investments into BEV manufacturing without preparing itself with the software and technology for that field first. Also, the infrastructure for BEVs just doesn't exist in the capacity needed to support a transition from ICE to BEV in the US. They should have introduced strong hybrid vehicles first as a transition point. Frankly, I'm shocked that in essence they made the same mistake twice. They invested heavily in China and once China understood the business model, they grabbed it and began cutting VW loose. Then VW invests heavily in electric vehicles and autonomous driving, which the world is not truly ready for on a large scale. All of these missteps happening shortly after Dieselgate has drained the VW war chest, and now they will pay with market share and job losses.
Let’s face it, VW is essentially competing with BYD, they’re targeting broadly the same consumer group, people looking for affordable-ish cars.
But BYD and VW are essentially very different companies. BYD is highly vertically integrated, the company began as a battery maker and its owns mines upstream, it processes rare earths midstream and it manufactures batteries downstream.
For VW to compete, it needs to not just compete in the car sector but also as a mining company, as a rare earth refiner, as a battery maker and as a software developer. That’s a BIG ask.
Also it’s worth noting that while the western media keeps talking about Chinese subsidies. The subsidies aren’t really what makes Chinese products affordable, it’s the massive economies of scale in China.
China’s SOCs dominate the heavy industries and the economies of scale are incomparable. China’s SOCs do not maximise profits, they maximise affordability and act as shock absorbers for the private sector.
So it’s possible that a 4th scenario emerges, VW collapses and there are no buyers. Aside from the brand and the factory space, VW doesn’t have much value, certainly not on the technology side, the Chinese have recently broken the long held 40-41% thermal efficiency, setting a new record at 48.41% gasoline thermal efficiency. And it’s not just gasoline, they also broke the diesel thermal efficiency achieving 53.09%.
The Chinese now make the best EV batteries, the most efficient gasoline engines and the most efficient diesel engines. Do they really need two letters, “V,” and “W,” ? I don’t think they do.
Another thought: "The jobs of tomorrow are being created in the US and in China."
Not sure this will occur. In China, maybe yes, but in the US? According to the Guardian, the U.S. LOST 14,000 jobs between June and December 2025. From June 2025-June 2026 the country gained just north of 550,000 jobs. Compare that to June 2023-2024, when the nation added 2.5M jobs. Bottom line, someone living outside the US may not see this, but that country now is managed by a gang of sycophants and incompetents who busily are stealing from the public and could not care less about citizens' employment fortunes. New age jobs may not be created in Germany for the reasons stated in the article, but unless the U.S. federal government is returned to the hands of competent people who can put a stop to the mass-scale corruption presently occurring, I would not look to the U.S. for much of anything other than circus-style politics, white nationalist violence and, eventually, a mass brain drain.
This article may have been prescient. The linked article says (en español) that VW is considering the elimination of 50 THOUSAND jobs worldwide. There’s talk of “competitiveness” — is this just a bid by greedy executives to drive down wages in Germany?
Perhaps you are not thinking big enough and new enough. The car of the future will require very different skills? Yes, but will the car of the future be just a souped up, high-tech version of the car of today, or will the vast majority of future cars not be individually owned? Will the entire car market be far smaller, instead of close to one car per person, one car per five people, or 10 people, used intensively all day long in autonomous rideshare. Not a good future for VW, but a purely for-profit company would realize this, and have an exit strategy, to either largely liquidate the company’s assets to shareholders, or go into a new business.
You should look at VWs China business. The numbers got released yesterday as well. VW sold 31000 BEVs in the entirety of China over the last 6 months.
They and XPeng are developing products nobody will ever buy. The entire VW operation in China is heavily subsidized by its European business, which if you actually look at the numbers, is doing pretty okay.
Another point is that VW can not do layoffs, which means that they can not meaningfully reduce production capacity. A worker in a VW factory, with no education, is getting paid the same as an engineer with a PhD and VW is *stuck* with tens of thousands of these workers, for whom absolutely no work exists and will never again exist. VW is a massive social benefit operation, which now suddenly can no longer fund itself. The Betriebsrat and the Land have decided that VW will not get an opportunity to ever be competitive, they will also never sell. Also *no one will buy*, since it would mean buying the Betriebsrat and the workers, which absolutely no company would ever want. It’s genuinely a death pact, like the entirety of Europe. Do everything to keep things as they are for as long as possible. Everything for the retirement pensions of the people who caused this.
German manufacturing companies have been not-so-subtly signaling that they want to move to China completely over the last decade or so and the EU and German government are not only completely oblivious but have been raiding them like a piggy bank, hastening the decoupling. Complete insanity.
This feels like a familiar pattern. When Microsoft bought Nokia’s handset business, the lesson was not just about scale, but about who gets to own your decline.
Europe should read this as a market signal, not just an industrial drama. We can’t preserve every legacy player forever, but we also can’t let the future be built elsewhere. The real tradeoff is this: either support companies that can compete with Tesla, Xpeng, Waymo, and WeRide, or watch the old giants fade while others define the next era.
If consolidation is coming, Europe needs to be far more strategic about which buyers, which assets, and which capabilities it wants to keep in the game.
A slightly sharper version, if you want more bite:
Europe can’t keep every dinosaur alive. But if some must disappear, the replacement should not be weakness — it should be a new generation of companies able to compete with Tesla, Xpeng, Waymo, and WeRide.
Microsoft/Nokia was a warning. Germany and Europe should not repeat the same mistake: if a company is going to be sold, don’t choose the buyer that helps destroy your own industrial future.
Does the author or the readers realize that this is already happening? The content is engaging, but why no mention of Bugatti Rimac? It's already no longer part of VW. Sold. why no mention of new Skoda tech Center in India? That BMW started one last year, merc has one since a decade and the workforce there has tripled. VW won't probably be sold to China, it's a good hook. The truth is, it's already being dismantled.
It is well known that India/Indians are respected talent in tech. For the same reason, they head the biggest tech companies on the planet. Software companies in Europe are filled with Indians too. For obvious reasons, it's cheaper to get work done in India than by Indians in Europe.
It is well known by engineers all over the world that if you pay Indians you will get „Indian quality“, aka the worst engineering output in the world. Truly some the worst engineering culture in the entire world. There is a reason VW is outsourcing to China, the Chinese, at the very least, are competent.
An almost perfect example of Europe getting caught between 2 forces and trying to hang on to legacy infrastructure.
The car tech aspect is an interesting one. It is still caught between mechanical and digital overlap. Chipsets are expensive. Increasingly not for manufacturers but for customers. It looks to me that is the exact area where a car maker makes his money nowadays. Chipset/ computer issues galore does complicate matters. New cars w issues!
European governments have not only not been trying to keep their companies centered on Europe, but treat them like hostages. The whole no-growth economy thing they think can last forever is about to turn into a permanent negative growth issue and the poor and middle class will be left holding the bag with broken down wind turbines and used up solar cells to show for it.
Literally nobody cares. Every single car maker did the same thing, because the rules were essentially impossible to follow.
The EU made up batshit rules, which were impossible to make engines for and the car makers responded in the only way they could. VW did, BMW did, Mercedes did, Stellantis did, etc.
It's easy to pick on VW for past mistakes, lousy investments, and inertia. The real question is how to overcome the inertia and the friction of current German laws to reinvent the business. It really comes down to the value of the finished product. I for one do not trust VW quality after years of anecdotal evidence from friends. It's better for Europe that they survive, but not at the company's current size. "Hey, let's make a smaller, cheaper, functional People's Car!"
VW made the mistake of putting too many investments into BEV manufacturing without preparing itself with the software and technology for that field first. Also, the infrastructure for BEVs just doesn't exist in the capacity needed to support a transition from ICE to BEV in the US. They should have introduced strong hybrid vehicles first as a transition point. Frankly, I'm shocked that in essence they made the same mistake twice. They invested heavily in China and once China understood the business model, they grabbed it and began cutting VW loose. Then VW invests heavily in electric vehicles and autonomous driving, which the world is not truly ready for on a large scale. All of these missteps happening shortly after Dieselgate has drained the VW war chest, and now they will pay with market share and job losses.
Let’s face it, VW is essentially competing with BYD, they’re targeting broadly the same consumer group, people looking for affordable-ish cars.
But BYD and VW are essentially very different companies. BYD is highly vertically integrated, the company began as a battery maker and its owns mines upstream, it processes rare earths midstream and it manufactures batteries downstream.
For VW to compete, it needs to not just compete in the car sector but also as a mining company, as a rare earth refiner, as a battery maker and as a software developer. That’s a BIG ask.
Also it’s worth noting that while the western media keeps talking about Chinese subsidies. The subsidies aren’t really what makes Chinese products affordable, it’s the massive economies of scale in China.
China’s SOCs dominate the heavy industries and the economies of scale are incomparable. China’s SOCs do not maximise profits, they maximise affordability and act as shock absorbers for the private sector.
So it’s possible that a 4th scenario emerges, VW collapses and there are no buyers. Aside from the brand and the factory space, VW doesn’t have much value, certainly not on the technology side, the Chinese have recently broken the long held 40-41% thermal efficiency, setting a new record at 48.41% gasoline thermal efficiency. And it’s not just gasoline, they also broke the diesel thermal efficiency achieving 53.09%.
The Chinese now make the best EV batteries, the most efficient gasoline engines and the most efficient diesel engines. Do they really need two letters, “V,” and “W,” ? I don’t think they do.
Another thought: "The jobs of tomorrow are being created in the US and in China."
Not sure this will occur. In China, maybe yes, but in the US? According to the Guardian, the U.S. LOST 14,000 jobs between June and December 2025. From June 2025-June 2026 the country gained just north of 550,000 jobs. Compare that to June 2023-2024, when the nation added 2.5M jobs. Bottom line, someone living outside the US may not see this, but that country now is managed by a gang of sycophants and incompetents who busily are stealing from the public and could not care less about citizens' employment fortunes. New age jobs may not be created in Germany for the reasons stated in the article, but unless the U.S. federal government is returned to the hands of competent people who can put a stop to the mass-scale corruption presently occurring, I would not look to the U.S. for much of anything other than circus-style politics, white nationalist violence and, eventually, a mass brain drain.
This article may have been prescient. The linked article says (en español) that VW is considering the elimination of 50 THOUSAND jobs worldwide. There’s talk of “competitiveness” — is this just a bid by greedy executives to drive down wages in Germany?
https://www.jornada.com.mx/noticia/2026/07/13/economia/volkswagen-analiza-eliminar-hasta-50-mil-empleos-en-todo-el-mundo
Perhaps you are not thinking big enough and new enough. The car of the future will require very different skills? Yes, but will the car of the future be just a souped up, high-tech version of the car of today, or will the vast majority of future cars not be individually owned? Will the entire car market be far smaller, instead of close to one car per person, one car per five people, or 10 people, used intensively all day long in autonomous rideshare. Not a good future for VW, but a purely for-profit company would realize this, and have an exit strategy, to either largely liquidate the company’s assets to shareholders, or go into a new business.
You should look at VWs China business. The numbers got released yesterday as well. VW sold 31000 BEVs in the entirety of China over the last 6 months.
They and XPeng are developing products nobody will ever buy. The entire VW operation in China is heavily subsidized by its European business, which if you actually look at the numbers, is doing pretty okay.
Another point is that VW can not do layoffs, which means that they can not meaningfully reduce production capacity. A worker in a VW factory, with no education, is getting paid the same as an engineer with a PhD and VW is *stuck* with tens of thousands of these workers, for whom absolutely no work exists and will never again exist. VW is a massive social benefit operation, which now suddenly can no longer fund itself. The Betriebsrat and the Land have decided that VW will not get an opportunity to ever be competitive, they will also never sell. Also *no one will buy*, since it would mean buying the Betriebsrat and the workers, which absolutely no company would ever want. It’s genuinely a death pact, like the entirety of Europe. Do everything to keep things as they are for as long as possible. Everything for the retirement pensions of the people who caused this.
You're blaming environmentalists for VW's attempt to skirt the law with a lie. Get a grip, dude
German manufacturing companies have been not-so-subtly signaling that they want to move to China completely over the last decade or so and the EU and German government are not only completely oblivious but have been raiding them like a piggy bank, hastening the decoupling. Complete insanity.
This feels like a familiar pattern. When Microsoft bought Nokia’s handset business, the lesson was not just about scale, but about who gets to own your decline.
Europe should read this as a market signal, not just an industrial drama. We can’t preserve every legacy player forever, but we also can’t let the future be built elsewhere. The real tradeoff is this: either support companies that can compete with Tesla, Xpeng, Waymo, and WeRide, or watch the old giants fade while others define the next era.
If consolidation is coming, Europe needs to be far more strategic about which buyers, which assets, and which capabilities it wants to keep in the game.
A slightly sharper version, if you want more bite:
Europe can’t keep every dinosaur alive. But if some must disappear, the replacement should not be weakness — it should be a new generation of companies able to compete with Tesla, Xpeng, Waymo, and WeRide.
Microsoft/Nokia was a warning. Germany and Europe should not repeat the same mistake: if a company is going to be sold, don’t choose the buyer that helps destroy your own industrial future.
What about a pivot to military hardware?
Does the author or the readers realize that this is already happening? The content is engaging, but why no mention of Bugatti Rimac? It's already no longer part of VW. Sold. why no mention of new Skoda tech Center in India? That BMW started one last year, merc has one since a decade and the workforce there has tripled. VW won't probably be sold to China, it's a good hook. The truth is, it's already being dismantled.
Setting up a tech office in India because you can't produce quality software in Europe is a joke of cosmic proportions.
It is well known that India/Indians are respected talent in tech. For the same reason, they head the biggest tech companies on the planet. Software companies in Europe are filled with Indians too. For obvious reasons, it's cheaper to get work done in India than by Indians in Europe.
It is well known by engineers all over the world that if you pay Indians you will get „Indian quality“, aka the worst engineering output in the world. Truly some the worst engineering culture in the entire world. There is a reason VW is outsourcing to China, the Chinese, at the very least, are competent.
I take it you don't work in the software industry.
An almost perfect example of Europe getting caught between 2 forces and trying to hang on to legacy infrastructure.
The car tech aspect is an interesting one. It is still caught between mechanical and digital overlap. Chipsets are expensive. Increasingly not for manufacturers but for customers. It looks to me that is the exact area where a car maker makes his money nowadays. Chipset/ computer issues galore does complicate matters. New cars w issues!
European governments have not only not been trying to keep their companies centered on Europe, but treat them like hostages. The whole no-growth economy thing they think can last forever is about to turn into a permanent negative growth issue and the poor and middle class will be left holding the bag with broken down wind turbines and used up solar cells to show for it.
Germany will do everything including committing an economic suicide before selling VW to anyone
Well that makes buying the new SCOUT a different game.
Dieselgate, dude
Literally nobody cares. Every single car maker did the same thing, because the rules were essentially impossible to follow.
The EU made up batshit rules, which were impossible to make engines for and the car makers responded in the only way they could. VW did, BMW did, Mercedes did, Stellantis did, etc.
Deiselgate was a self inflicted wound by the EU green cult.
Ultimately the industrial base of the EU has been hollowed out and forced into terminal decline for the sake of adherence to the green cathechism.