Wolfsburg has finally dropped the mask, and it’s not a pretty sight. In the hollowed-out halls of Volkswagen, half-measures have been officially tossed into the shredder. Oliver Blume and his numbers-crunching sidekick, CFO Arno Antlitz, have unveiled a roadmap that reads more like a survivalist manual than a corporate strategy: a brutal 20% cost amputation by 2028.
Volkswagen is planning to “synergy” the life out of the company to keep the shareholders from jumping ship. We’re talking about a human bonfire involving tens of thousands of jobs, all neatly gift-wrapped in corporate jargon about “industrial optimization”.
The carnage isn’t just a future threat, it’s already here. After rubber-stamping the execution of 35,000 positions back in 2024, the axe has now swung toward Cariad. You know, the software division tasked with actually making VWs feel like they belong in this century. They’ve slashed nearly 30% of the workforce there. It’s like trying to design the “digital architecture of tomorrow” while firing a third of the architects today. Good luck coding the future on a skeleton crew while the competition in China is already three laps ahead.
Then we have the “Brand Core Group”. It’s a fancy term for turning a SEAT in Spain and a Skoda in Czechia into the same generic appliance. They want to think in “production regions” instead of, heaven forbid, actual brand identity. It’s the ultimate “do more with less” shell game. If one factory stumbles, another picks up the slack, effectively erasing the soul of the individual brands in favor of a grey, homogenized efficiency.
The most infuriating part? The balance sheet is actually bleeding cash, but in a good way, somehow. With $6 billion in net cash flow predicted for 2025, Volkswagen looks rich on paper while the foundation rots. Even the golden goose, Porsche, is showing signs of performance anxiety, struggling with historic lows that should have alarm bells ringing from Stuttgart to Wolfsburg.
Between a stagnant Chinese market, a hostile US wall of tariffs, and a European electric transition that has the grace of a lead balloon, Volkswagen is essentially burning its people to save its pennies. Blume might hit that 20% target, but by the time he’s done cutting, there might not be enough of a company left to actually build a car worth driving.
