The conversion strain of traditional car companies is a common topic, but this topic has shown a particularly vivid and exaggerated appearance in the comparison of the new dynamics between Volkswagen and Tesla in the past two days.
German business daily “Handelsblatt” reported that Volkswagen may consider cutting up to 30,000 jobs in order to increase competitiveness and cut costs during the industry’s transition to electrification.
On the same day, Musk retweeted a tweet showing that Tesla, with a market value of US$808 billion, surpassed the combined market value of 11 traditional car giants including Volkswagen, General Motors, Ford, Honda, etc.
According to the “Business Daily” report, Volkswagen CEO Herbert Diess had recommended layoffs at the Supervisory Board meeting in September, but other participants rejected the proposal.
Volkswagen responded on Wednesday that competition from new entrants to the German auto market such as Tesla did prompted Volkswagen to accelerate its plan to transform its main factory in Wolfsburg to produce electric vehicles.
“There is no doubt that considering the new market entrants, we must solve the competitiveness of our factory in Wolfsburg,” said Volkswagen spokesperson Michael Manske.
But Michael Manske denied the report that the public is considering laying off 30,000 employees. “There is a debate now, there are already many good ideas, and there is no specific plan.”
A spokesperson for the Volkswagen Workers’ Committee said that although they would not comment on whether Diess made the above remarks, “the layoffs of 30,000 jobs are absurd and baseless.”
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Volkswagen’s factory in Wolfsburg, Germany is the world’s largest manufacturing plant with more than 20,000 employees and has produced an average of approximately 780,000 cars per year in the past 10 years.
But so far the factory has not yet started producing electric cars, and due to chip shortages, it may still face the dilemma of the lowest output in history this year.
Volkswagen said this week that it will cut the working hours of the Wolfsburg plant in the first two weeks of October and will run only one assembly line to produce models such as Golf, Touran, and Tiguan.
Volkswagen also has plans to launch its flagship electric car Trinity, but it will not start production here until 2026. Compared with Tesla and many Chinese new energy vehicle companies, the pace is obviously too slow.
At the same time, Tesla’s factory in Berlin, Germany, is in full swing. Musk announced on October 6th that Tesla’s Berlin factory aims to start production within a few months and hopes to deliver the first car in December.
Musk said that in addition to millions of battery cells, the Berlin plant is also expected to produce Model Y cars. It will mass-produce 5,000 or 10,000 electric cars every week and 500,000 electric cars every year.
Volkswagen’s slogan of “swearing to surpass Tesla” has been shouting for a long time, and plans to surpass Tesla in sales of electric vehicles by 2025.
In order to promote the electric transformation of Volkswagen, in the new round of investment plans from 2020 to 2024, for hybrid, electric vehicles, and digitalization, Volkswagen has decided to invest nearly 60 billion euros, of which 30 billion euros will be invested in electric vehicles.
In Volkswagen’s plan, by 2029, the group will launch as many as 75 pure electric vehicles and about 60 hybrid vehicles to the market. Volkswagen expects that by 2029, the number of its electric vehicles will increase to about 26 million.
One of the confidence that supports Volkswagen’s goal of surpassing Tesla is Volkswagen’s MEB platform, which is an independent tool specially designed by Volkswagen for new energy vehicles.
According to the design, the MEB platform cuts out the front engine, gearbox, and corresponding traditional systems of the traditional car, so the structure is simplified. The battery capacity of the model based on the platform is increased the driving range is increased, and the wheelbase of the same size is increased. The internal space is improved, and due to its high degree of modularity, while the cost of manufacturing the vehicle is greatly reduced, the model replacement cycle can also be significantly shortened.
In terms of charging stations, in 2017, Volkswagen and BMW, Daimler, Ford, Hyundai, and other car companies jointly established charging pile company Ionity in an attempt to expand the charging facility network in Europe. At present, Ionity has installed more than 400 charging piles on major European highways. In the future, the charging station business will be extended to cities.
In addition, Volkswagen’s brand Audi is also considering investing 1 billion euros this year to build its own brand of electric vehicle charging stations in major European cities. Porsche may also join Audi’s charging station system.
In terms of batteries, Volkswagen is currently building three battery plants in Asia, Europe, and the United States. At the end of September, Volkswagen’s first battery system factory wholly-owned in China officially started construction, which will all be used for the pure production of Volkswagen’s MEB plant in Anhui.
This year, Volkswagen launched a battery recycling pilot plant in Salzgitter, Germany, with an estimated annual production capacity of 40GWh, while Tesla’s German battery factory, which also started construction this year, has an estimated annual production capacity of 50GWh.
In addition, Thomas Schmall, the chief technology officer of Volkswagen, also revealed in a recent interview that in addition to its IPO plan for its battery division, Volkswagen is also considering listing its charging and energy business.
But Schmall said that no decision has been made yet, and it may take up to two years to set up a new company and prepare for listing.
Regarding Volkswagen’s electric vehicle target, the market has reacted strongly, and investment banks have also been enthusiastic about it before.
For example, UBS analysts compared the ID.3 of Volkswagen’s first pure electric vehicle with Tesla products through dismantling and believed that ID.3 based on the MEB platform is the ticket for Volkswagen to enter the electric era, and it is also a well-known car. The most impressive solution provided by the company.
In the first half of this year, the Volkswagen Group’s pure electric vehicle sales were 170,000 units, a year-on-year increase of 165.2%, and only 28.3% of its fiscal year target of 600,000 units were completed.
According to Tesla’s data, in the third quarter alone, Tesla produced approximately 238,000 vehicles worldwide and delivered a total of more than 240,000 vehicles.
The September automobile production and sales data released by the National Passenger Car Market Information Federation shows that in September, Tesla’s sales in China were 56,006, a new high, while the Volkswagen Group’s all-electric vehicle ID series sold 10,126 in September.
As of press time, Tesla’s share price has reached 811.08 US dollars, the stock price has increased by 80.69% in the past year, and the current market value is about 798 billion US dollars.
The Volkswagen Group’s share price is 273 Euros. In the past year, its share price has risen by 89.86%, and its total market value is approximately US$136 billion.
