The head of the German car manufacturer Volkswagen, Oliver Blume, has given his assessment of the European car market: in his opinion, the Western car industry is in “a very difficult situation, never seen before.”
Author:
https://rb.ru/author/alipova/
Subscribe to RB.RU on Telegram
“The cake is getting smaller and we have more guests at the table,” Blume was quoted as saying by Reuters in an interview with the Bild am Sonntag newspaper.
We are talking, in particular, about increasing competition: in a context of general market saturation and a decline in demand for cars, “new competitors from Asia are rapidly penetrating Europe.”
The head of the group admits that “economic conditions have become even more difficult, especially for the Volkswagen brand,” but noted that production will continue in the country where “our grandparents worked for Volkswagen.”
“And I want their grandchildren to continue working here,” Blume said. At the same time, the corporate savings program adopted in 2023 contains clauses on job cuts.
To achieve its goal of increasing profits to 10 billion euros by 2026, the consortium needs to save around 5 billion euros in costs.
But “cost reduction alone is not enough now,” the company’s director believes. New measures are needed, but he does not say which ones.
Author:
Ekaterina Alipova
Source: RB
I am a professional journalist and content creator with extensive experience writing for news websites. I currently work as an author at Gadget Onus, where I specialize in covering hot news topics. My written pieces have been published on some of the biggest media outlets around the world, including The Guardian and BBC News.
