Volkswagen is cutting hundreds of jobs at its electric car factory in Zwickau – due to the “current market situation”, as a spokesperson explained. According to media reports, 269 temporary contracts that will soon expire will not be extended. Shift operations are also expected to be adjusted.
As reported by dpa, the job cuts in Zwickau affect employees with fixed-term contracts. Currently, about 2,500 of the 10,700 employees at Volkswagen’s electric car plant are on fixed-term contracts. According to the spokesperson, the concrete procedure will be agreed with the employee representatives in the next few days. It is not yet clear whether the job cuts will affect more than the 269 employees mentioned above. According to the VW spokesperson, it is not yet possible to say what the future holds for these employees. This will depend on how the order situation develops in the coming weeks and months.
In addition to the ID.4, the coupé offshoot ID.5, the compact ID.3, the Cupra Born and the Audi Q4 e-tron as SUV and Sportback are also built in Zwickau. According to Automobilwoche, the Volkswagen Group will also permanently cut shifts. This had been foreshadowed: as early as mid-July, Manager Magazin reported that the recent noticeable decline in electric car demand was particularly explosive for Volkswagen.
According to a report published in Manager Magazin two months ago, the order backlog for the electric car plant in Zwickau still stood at just under 300,000 cars at the turn of the year but had shrunk to significantly less than half that in July. “We have had a strong reluctance to buy electric cars since January, regardless of the brand,” a Volkswagen Group dealer told the German publication Wirtschaftsblatt. At the time it was also said that – if the situation did not improve quickly – production in Zwickau would be switched from three-shift to two-shift operation.
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At the end of June, it was also reported that VW is temporarily reducing the production of electric cars at its plant in Emden. In Wolfsburg, where VW has set up an additional production line for the ID.3 as overflow production from Zwickau at a cost of around 50 million euros, only a “small double-digit” number of ID.3s were said to have been produced per day in July. According to an article in the Handelsblatt also published in July, Volkswagen is struggling with demand problems for its electric models not only in Germany but in Europe as a whole.
In addition – as Automobilwoche now writes – Volkswagen has significantly expanded its electric production in the past two years and thus shifted production volumes out of Zwickau. This applies to the ID.4 for the US market, which is now produced locally. However, it is questionable whether the ID.3 will also roll off the production line in Wolfsburg from autumn as planned.