{"id":52437,"date":"2026-07-10T20:27:38","date_gmt":"2026-07-10T20:27:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/52437\/"},"modified":"2026-07-10T20:27:38","modified_gmt":"2026-07-10T20:27:38","slug":"volkswagen-sales-tumble-as-job-cuts-loom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/52437\/","title":{"rendered":"Volkswagen sales tumble as job cuts loom"},"content":{"rendered":"

Volkswagen said on Friday that its decline in vehicle sales accelerated in the second quarter as the crisis-hit German automaker faces mounting pressure from weak demand and reports that it is considering cutting up to 100,000 jobs worldwide, News.Az<\/a> reports, citing AFP<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The company said overall vehicle deliveries fell nearly 9% year-on-year in the April-June period, largely due to a sharp decline in demand in China. In the first quarter, Volkswagen’s sales had fallen by 4%.<\/p>\n

“The situation in China remains challenging, and we were unable to escape a clearly declining overall market,” Volkswagen<\/a> executive Marco Schubert said in a statement.<\/p>\n

He added that the decline came “despite initial positive momentum from our newly introduced, locally developed electric vehicles there.”<\/p>\n

Europe’s largest carmaker is facing growing pressure from U.S. tariffs, shrinking profit margins on electric vehicles and, above all, intensifying competition in China, the world’s largest automotive market.<\/p>\n

The 10-brand group, which includes Volkswagen, Audi and Porsche, has already announced plans to cut at least 50,000 jobs in Germany by 2030.<\/p>\n

However, recent media reports have suggested the company is considering reducing its global workforce by as many as 100,000 employees and closing four factories in Germany.<\/p>\n

Germany’s powerful IG Metall union organized protests at Volkswagen facilities across the country on Thursday as company management presented its cost-cutting plans to the supervisory board.<\/p>\n

There was no major announcement Thursday, with VW simply reiterating previous plans to cut capacity and its model line-up, and analysts said talks would likely take time.<\/p>\n

“For now, people are sharpening their swords and firming up their positions,” auto analyst Stefan Bratzel of the Centre of Automotive Management told AFP.<\/p>\n

“This is going to drag on for months and months.”<\/p>\n

Volkswagen executives have repeatedly stressed the need for the company to slim down as collapsing sales in China have started to look less like a blip and more like a new normal.<\/p>\n

It is a crisis hitting the whole German car industry — BMW said Friday its second-quarter car sales had fallen almost five percent worldwide, dragged down by a 30.2-percent plunge in China.<\/p>\n

Chinese brands are also threatening Volkswagen on its home turf.<\/p>\n

The likes of Geely, Xpeng and BYD took a nine percent share of the European market in March, according to automotive intelligence firm Dataforce, up from virtually zero three years ago.<\/p>\n

“The Chinese are coming to Europe, also building factories which are highly efficient,” Volkswagen CEO Oliver Blume warned in April. “We cannot compete with underutilised plants.”<\/p>\n

But labour representatives and the German state of Lower Saxony — both of whom take a dim view of possible plant closures — together hold more than half the seats on VW’s supervisory board.<\/p>\n

This means any major restructuring is uncertain and will be hard fought.<\/p>\n

“Fundamentally, Volkswagen is too big, too complex, too expensive and too slow,” auto analyst Bratzel said.<\/p>\n

News.Az<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\tBy Nijat Babayev<\/a>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Volkswagen said on Friday that its decline in vehicle sales accelerated in the second quarter as the crisis-hit…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":52438,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20947],"tags":[24702,41889,5,5767,5356],"class_list":["post-52437","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-volkswagen","tag-auto-industry","tag-car-sales","tag-germany","tag-job-cuts","tag-volkswagen"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52437","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52437"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52437\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/52438"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52437"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52437"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52437"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}