VW (Germany) agrees to cut 30,000 jobs.
The part that is missing is this part of the article:
The cuts came with a management pledge to create 9,000 new jobs in the area of battery production and mobility services at factories in Germany as part of efforts to shift towards electric and self-driving cars.
Emphasis is mine.
So, the long term thinking is that by improving the operating margin from 2% to 4%, they will have restored
investor and regulator confidence, that the VW brand is not as tarnished, as other brands have become due to shady practices.
Now, If I was part of a region that produced vehicles, and the
Consumer Demand warranted a shift, then would you not want the factories to be as efficient as possible?
I would hope that they would do this by a natural course of events, as demand wanes for a certain technology, then that particular segment (of the economy) would become diminished and no longer be competitive.
However, this is a world-wide problem,
Population density, and the need to have 1,000s of people move in the most efficient means possible,
and be as benign to the environment as possible.
In the urban environment, there will always be different needs, but if you look at the major world city populations, you will see that tailpipe emissions are only one way to restrict and change patterns of traffic use.
The cutting of 30,000 jobs in auto manufacture, means that there are now higher levels of competition for the remaining jobs, to produce x number of vehicles per unit time. (Hour , Shift, Day, Annually).
It is the level of production, with the labor(labour) component now being reduced where the overall cost of a vehicle, is the sum of the parts that go into the delivery of said vehicle.
Now, If the cost to manufacture, a fuel efficient, east to operate vehicle, goes up for one region(Europe) then the impact is that there will be additional demand on the other countries that supply the world market for vehicles, China, S.Korea, Japan, USA, Canada, India.
Since I live in Canada, I cheer for the local team, but unfortunately, for me there is no vehicle that is made domestically that fulfills my needs.
Indirectly, this is good news for the rest of the world-wide auto industry, perhaps, VW might consider opening a new plant in Canada to fulfill the need for the
shift to electric and self driving vehicles.
