Volkswagen CEO Oliver Bloomer is facing thousands of angry workers at its company headquarters in walsburg the meeting follows Monday’s shock news that the company’s planning to shut factories in Germany for the first time the plan also includes abolishing job guarantees that have been in place for more than 30 years to cut costs in many ways this has been a question of not if but when VW has capacity to make 40 million cars annually and last year they made just 9 million for some years the profit machine in China was able to paper over the high costs in Europe but now new competitors like byd are leap froing VW left right and center with Superior EVS in particular also straight after covid for some years we had huge supply chain constraints that restricted production and kept car prices artificially high but those factors are well gone consumers and our Bing at buying expensive EVs and generally feeling the pressure from years of inflation to be sure this is just vw’s opening gamed they may well be going for a less dramatic Middle Ground than shutting SES in Autumn wage talks are kicking off what we might see at the end of the day is workers agreeing to a zero or very little pay increase however what’s absolutely clear VW is done doing business as usual