Volkswagen CEO Herbert Diess fears 30,000 jobs could be lost if the company faces a slow transition to electric vehicles, as competition from new companies such as Tesla pushes Volkswagen to speed up its transformation.
According to Arab Net, the American electric car maker plans to produce 500,000 cars annually in Germany with 12,000 employees, while 25,000 workers in Volkswagen produce only 700,000 cars at the Wolfsburg plant. .
A company spokesperson confirmed Des' position that Tesla and others in Germany had increased the urgency of the transition to electric vehicles, but denied making specific calculations about the number of jobs it could create. Lose in the process.
There is no doubt that we have to address the competitiveness of our Wolfsburg plant in light of new entrants to the market, said Volkswagen spokesman Michael Mansky, referring to Tesla. and new Chinese automakers making their way to Europe.
Tesla is setting new standards for productivity and range at Grunhead, referring to the Tesla plant under construction near Berlin that will produce at full capacity between 5,000 and 10,000 cars per week, he added. , more than double Germany's production of electric cars in 2020.
A spokesman for the Volkswagen Workers' Council said that cutting 30,000 jobs was absurd and baseless.
This was also denied by another union spokesman from Lower Saxony, Volkswagen's second largest shareholder, saying such cuts were out of the question.
As the auto industry estimates, electric vehicles contain far fewer parts than an internal combustion engine, and therefore require fewer workers to produce. According to one estimate, 100,000 jobs could be lost in the German auto industry by 2025 as a result of electrification.
The Volkswagen plant in Wolfsburg, the largest in the world with more than 50,000 employees, does not currently make electric cars, but the company plans to produce an electric sedan there as of from 2026 under a plan called Project Trinity.
