Basically positive – with one big but: The emotional state of Volkswagen boss Herbert Diess at yesterday’s annual press conference reflected the situation at Europe’s largest car manufacturer. “Actually, we have every reason to be optimistic. If it weren’t for the war in Ukraine, which is causing human tragedy but also economic upheaval,” said Diess.
Compared to Corona, the war might put an even worse strain on the economies in Europe. “It is to be feared that we are not yet seeing the secondary effects. There is still a lot to come,” said Diess. For many automotive suppliers in Upper Austria, Volkswagen is one of the leading buyers of their components.
The people of Wolfsburg are already feeling the effects of rising raw material and energy prices, exchange rate effects and the shortage of materials. While the chip bottleneck in the automotive industry weighed heavily in recent years, the lack of cable harnesses from Ukraine is now causing corporations to cut shifts in their factories or shut down the production lines. According to Diess, all VW locations in the core country of Germany are affected – which also has an impact on domestic suppliers.
Because of the bottlenecks in Europe, Volkswagen wants to temporarily relocate the production of several tens of thousands of vehicles from Europe to North and South America and China.
The numbers: Volkswagen, with 672,500 employees, was able to increase sales by twelve percent to 250 billion euros last year, and almost doubled operating profit before special effects to 20 billion euros. Both values are around the pre-crisis level.
Sales are still a bit far from that: Volkswagen sold eleven billion vehicles in 2019, but only 9.2 billion in 2020 and 8.6 billion in the previous year. Diess justified the fact that the result increased by saying that more high-margin vehicles were sold and available semiconductors were also installed there.
Porsche before the IPO
Business drivers at Volkswagen in the past year were the premium brands Porsche, Audi, Lamborghini and Bentley. The group wants to list the “return pearl” Porsche in the fourth quarter – and use the money to promote e-mobility. By 2030, 60 percent of all Group vehicles sold should be electric, in 2021 it was 5.1 percent.
