Volkswagen has announced plans to cut 30,000 jobs worldwide with about 23,000 of the losses borne in Germany.<\/p>\n
VW, still dealing with the aftermath of the emissions-cheating scandal, aims to rejuvenate its core brand, and develop new electric and self-driving cars.<\/p>\n
VW says it will create 9,000 jobs as part of investments in new products.<\/p>\n
The cuts should bring annual savings of \u20ac3.7bn (\u00a33.2bn; $3.92bn) by 2020. VW and unions have been hammering out a plan to revive its fortunes since June.<\/p>\n
Volkswagen chief executive, Matthias Mueller, said it was “the biggest modernisation programme in the history of the group’s core brand”.<\/p>\n
“The VW brand needs a real shake-up and that is exactly what the future pact has turned out to be,” he added.<\/p>\n
The car giant – which employs 610,000 people in 31 countries – wants to increase the brand’s profit margin from 2% to 4% and to do this it will need to improve productivity at its German plants by 25%.<\/p>\n
It has 120,000 workers in Germany so the cuts represent a fifth of employees in its heartland.<\/p>\n
Volkswagen has pledged there will be no compulsory redundancies and the top staff representative in Germany, Bernd Osterloh, said the new models would be built there: “The next generation of electric vehicles will be made here in Germany, not abroad.”<\/p>\n
Costly settlement<\/p>\n
Volkswagen has been battling a crisis caused by its attempts to dodge strict US emissions limits.<\/p>\n
Image copyrightAFP<\/p>\n
Image caption<\/p>\n
Chief executive Matthias Mueller told the press conference the VW brand needed a shake-up<\/p>\n
It was revealed in the US last year that VW’s diesel cars were fitted with software that “knew” when cars were being tested.<\/p>\n
The company has agreed to pay $15bn in a settlement with US authorities and owners of about 500,000 vehicles.<\/p>\n
Around 11 million cars worldwide have the software.<\/p>\n
The VW group comprises 12 brands from seven European countries: Volkswagen passenger cars, Audi, Seat, Skoda, Bentley, Bugatti, Lamborghini, Porsche, Ducati, Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles, Scania and MAN.<\/p>\n
Professor Christian Stadler, from Warwick Business School, said Friday’s announcement about electric cars marked “a new strategy in a rapidly changing car market”.<\/p>\n
China, the world’s biggest car market, is introducing an e-vehicle quota in 2018, where 8% of all vehicles sold will have to be electric. That quota rises to 12% in 2020.<\/p>\n
Prof Stadler said: “It means VW would have to sell 60,000 e-vehicles in China by 2018, and hybrids only represent half a point. Even BMW, one of the pioneers of electronic cars has sold just 1,204 e-vehicles in China in 2016 up to September.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Volkswagen has announced plans to cut 30,000 jobs worldwide with about 23,000 of the losses borne in Germany. VW, still dealing with the aftermath of the emissions-cheating scandal, aims to rejuvenate its core brand, and develop new electric and self-driving cars. VW says it will create 9,000 jobs as part of investments in new products. The cuts should bring annual savings of €3.7bn (£3.2bn; $3.92bn) by 2020. VW and unions have been hammering out a plan to revive its fortunes since June. Volkswagen chief executive, Matthias Mueller, said it was<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3977,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[12],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3976"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3976"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3976\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3978,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3976\/revisions\/3978"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3977"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3976"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3976"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3976"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}