VW

More stringent emissions regulations will cost 100,000 layoffs, says VW

The CEO of the VW Group, Herbert Diess, was very concerned about the increase in CO2 reduction, from 30% to 35% in 2030, compared to 2021, which the European Council will put to the vote in the European Parliament. Although the new target was only 35 percent under pressure from Germany, as countries had wished to raise the bar to 40 and up to 45 percent, the VW leader threatened with the potential loss of 100,000 jobs.Herbert Diess's position is strange and at various levels, one of which is the fact that all this confusion is due to the Dieselgate, in which some former leaders of the same group, meanwhile distant, decided to equip 11 million vehicles with malicious software, intended to mislead the emission measurement system. But if Diess has nothing to do with the problem of the German giant in 2015, it deals daily with the authorities of a country that has pressed the car industry (in Europe) the most, and detained several of its staff, still standing with the responsible for a number of cities - the last one was Belim, the capital - which, with the reinforcement of the courts, have been pursuing what Diess contests, is this "pushing" the industry towards the trams ahead of time, forcing manufacturers to produce more battery-powered cars to reduce CO2 emissions faster, which depend directly on fuel consumption. It has long been known that electric cars have far fewer parts to produce - electric motors are ludicrously simpler than internal combustion engines and do not require gearboxes, with only two gears working as reducers - this being the reason that leads the CEO to predict the loss of 100,000 jobs. This announcement on the eve of the vote on the new 35% bloc by the different countries in the European Parliament can only aim to frighten, especially the countries that have a car industry. Although all the Member States that rely heavily on this industry, with the exception of Germany (which still accepted the 35%) have been hit by reductions of 40% in diesel engines.
The strangest thing in Herbert Diess's position is that his VW Group is by far the most advanced in the production of electric vehicles among the traditional builders. Unlike the direct opponents of brands such as VW, Audi, Seat, Skoda and Porsche, the German group invested twice as much, if not triple, in factories for batteries, materials to produce them, specific platforms for electric vehicles and similar factories to produce them. With this he adopted Tesla's strategy - which had no alternative, since it never produced gasoline or diesel cars before, but could have retrofitted the old factory it bought from Toyota and set up the Model S and X, with much lower costs - investing heavily more, in order to achieve much lower unit costs and thereby maximize profits when they start to arrive.It is therefore strange that this European imposition of the 35% (to be approved), which obviously requires to anticipate a bigger manufacture of electric cars and that favors the German conglomerate, is contested by the same group. It is also worth remembering that VW wants to produce 100,000 electric vehicles by 2020, which is not a surprising value, but aims to raise it to 1 million by 2025, a much more respectable goal. And already in 2022, expects to have 27 electric vehicles on the market, of all its brands, using the platform MEB that designed specifically for battery-powered cars.



Autonews