{"id":62714,"date":"2026-07-28T10:32:16","date_gmt":"2026-07-28T10:32:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/62714\/"},"modified":"2026-07-28T10:32:16","modified_gmt":"2026-07-28T10:32:16","slug":"even-china-joint-ventures-fail-porsche-to-cut-21-of-workforce","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/62714\/","title":{"rendered":"Even China Joint Ventures Fail: Porsche to Cut 21% of Workforce"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"PorschePorsche logo. Captured from Porsche’s website<\/p>\n

As European automakers lose ground to Chinese carmakers in Europe and around the world, Porsche has launched a restructuring plan to cut 20% of its total workforce. With parent company Volkswagen’s plan to cut 100,000 jobs facing difficulties, the subsidiary is tightening its belt first.<\/p>\n

According to Reuters and other outlets on the 27th (local time), Porsche is pursuing a plan to cut 9,000 jobs, equivalent to one in five of its total employees, by 2035.<\/p>\n

In February last year, Porsche decided to lay off 3,900 employees, and this year it announced an additional 500 job cuts alongside the closure of a subsidiary. This time, it is adding 5,000 more, raising the total number of job cuts to 9,000. This is equivalent to about 21% of its total workforce of 42,600 as of the end of 2024.<\/p>\n

Porsche has embarked on such large-scale restructuring not only because of its struggles in the Chinese market but also due to a judgment that its electric vehicle strategy, which did not fit its luxury car image, has failed. Michael Leiters, who took office as CEO early this year, pushed for a complete overhaul of the business structure to address the slump, but results remain uncertain.<\/p>\n

Porsche’s 9,000 job cuts are part of the 100,000 workforce reduction at parent Volkswagen Group, which owns 10 brands. Volkswagen CEO Oliver Blume submitted a plan to the supervisory board on the 9th to expand the group-wide job cuts to around 100,000, but it was rejected due to opposition from union board members. As the group-level workforce restructuring was blocked, the move is interpreted as an attempt to try again, starting with the worst-performing subsidiary.<\/p>\n

Volkswagen Group, facing worsening performance, is also running out of time. The company said on the 24th that its net profit for the three months through the end of June was 1.54 billion euros (about 2.5707 trillion won), down 32.9% from the same period last year. In an interview with CNBC, Volkswagen CFO Arno Antlitz cited the heavy burden of tariff costs, the rapid growth of the imported premium car market in China, and the surge in Chinese government auto exports to Europe as causes. “This is putting pressure on our margins, and a margin of about 4% is a clear warning signal that we need to carry out a second phase of restructuring,” he stressed.<\/p>\n

\"AnAn employee inspects a completed vehicle at Porsche’s plant in Stuttgart-Zuffenhausen, Germany. Photo=AFP Yonhap News<\/p>\n

Ahead of Volkswagen and Porsche, the entire German auto industry, including Mercedes-Benz and BMW, is tightening its belt.<\/p>\n

Mercedes-Benz has declared cost reductions and structural improvements. Britta Seeger, Chief Human Resources Officer at Mercedes-Benz, recently said, “We plan to begin negotiations with the union on further structural improvements to secure competitiveness against our rivals.” These negotiations will proceed separately from the labor-management agreement guaranteeing employment at German plants until 2034. Under the current agreement, forced layoffs are prohibited at German plants, so the company has so far adjusted its workforce mainly through natural attrition and voluntary retirement. Mercedes-Benz is also reducing the workforce at its Chinese subsidiary.<\/p>\n

BMW recently lowered its forecast for the operating margin of its auto division this year from the previous 4-6% to 1-3%, following rising energy costs and a sharp drop in sales due to the recent Iran war. It also announced that it could cut its global workforce by 7,700, or 5% of the total. Audi plans to lay off 7,500 employees, equivalent to 14% of its total workforce in Germany, by 2029.<\/p>\n

The joint ventures with Chinese carmakers that European automakers, including German ones, had regarded as an alternative also received results amounting to a crushing defeat. According to Yicai, the market share of China-foreign joint ventures in the auto market, which was 60% in 2020, plunged to 28.2% in the first half of this year.<\/p>\n

In particular, sales of German brand vehicles fell sharply. Volkswagen’s Chinese subsidiary saw a 26% decline from the previous year, and Porsche shrank by 32%. When the joint ventures were first formed, European automakers took the lead thanks to their brand recognition, but as the shift to electric vehicles accelerated, Chinese companies turned the situation around by leveraging batteries, software, and price competitiveness. As Chinese carmakers have recently adopted premium strategies as well, analysts say it has become even more difficult for European cars to maintain their market position in China.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Porsche logo. Captured from Porsche’s website As European automakers lose ground to Chinese carmakers in Europe and around…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":62715,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21181],"tags":[35970,48180,7337,48178,48179,8406,41367,32528],"class_list":["post-62714","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-porsche","tag-bmw-workforce-reduction","tag-china-joint-ventures","tag-chinese-electric-vehicles","tag-european-auto-industry","tag-mercedes-benz-layoffs","tag-porsche","tag-porsche-job-cuts","tag-volkswagen-restructuring"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62714","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=62714"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62714\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/62715"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62714"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62714"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62714"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}