The Imminent Death of VW
The push to “electrify” everything that rolls is turning out to be a lot like the push to “vaccinate” everyone; both have turned out to have adverse effects.
Volkswagen (VW) hasn’t died suddenly — but it is dying.
Chief Financial Officer Arno Antlitz, speaking to thousands of maybe soon-to-be ex-VW employees, said VW has “one, maybe two” years to turn things around else there may no longer be a VW. The company is reportedly considering shuttering its plants in Germany — a Hail Mary pass to reduce manufacturing and compliance costs. But moving manufacturing operations to places where it costs less won’t solve VW’s problems because that is not VW’s core problem. (READ MORE: Cars and the Repair Shop Oracle)
Its core problem is that it bent the knee to “electrification.”
VW Bent Over Backward to Make Amends. That Was the Wrong Move.
Put more finely, it bent over backward when it was accused of “cheating” on federal-level emissions certification tests, which the government used to take away VW’s strongest selling point — affordable, high-mileage vehicles. That move crippled it financially by imposing unprecedented fines on the company for selling those vehicles.
Specifically, VW’s range of affordable high-mileage diesel-powered vehicles.
VW was the only car company selling a lineup of such vehicles, ranging from the $22k TDI Jetta — a family sedan that could travel more than 500 miles on a tank of fuel — to TDI-powered hatchbacks such as the Golf and Beetle as well as the larger Passat sedan. VW sold far more of these than Tesla sold of its $50k EVs, which go maybe 300 miles. (READ MORE: Dear Elon Musk, Cybertrucks Are Ugly)
Hence the problem.
The affordable, high-mileage cars VW was selling had to go, for much the same reason the safe and effective alternatives to the “vaccines” pushed in 2020 had to be pushed off the stage.
Ivermectin was derided as “horse paste.” VW’s TDI diesel engines were derided as “dirty” — not because they polluted in any meaningful way, but because VW had programmed them to pass federal emissions-certification tests. Every car company does this, just as every kid in government schools who wants to pass a history test goes along with the lie that what happened in 1861-1865 was a “civil war” rather than an attempt by the Confederate states to secede from a union-at-gunpoint they no longer wished to be part of.
What happened — as regards the federal emissions-certification tests — is that it was “discovered” that VW programmed the software that controlled the operation of its TDI engines to pass the tests.
Oh, the humanity!
Out in the world, when the driver of a TDI-powered VW floored the accelerator pedal, there was a slight and momentary increase in emissions that exceeded the federally allowable threshold. It was an angels-dancing-on-the-head-of-
VW has never recovered from this — and it is not likely it will ever recover from this.
VW Is No Longer the ‘People’s Car’
VW’s brand name stands for people’s car — a kind of tautology for affordable cars — and that is what VW used to sell. It no longer does. Instead, it is trying to sell battery-powered devices such as the ID.4 — which has a base price just shy of $40,000 (and a standard range of just over 200 miles) that escalates from there to just shy of $60,000.
On deck is an “electrified” Hippie Bus that only aged and wealthy hippies will be able to afford as it is expected to have a base price of just shy of $60k. (READ MORE: Biden’s Skeptics Will Halt the Next Transportation Revolution)
These are not people’s cars. They are affluent people’s cars. And there are only so many of them and for that reason only so many can be sold to them.
And that is why VW has “one, maybe two” years left. It is not a luxury car brand that can survive selling far fewer cars to far fewer people at far higher prices. Mercedes and other luxury car brands can do it that way because they are luxury car brands and so — ipso facto — don’t sell many vehicles.
VW can’t afford to operate that way because people who have the $50k to spend want a luxury brand for their money. VW trying to sell luxury-priced devices is akin to McDonald’s trying to sell a $15 plant-based Quarter Pounder.
Now, some news stories are spinning VW’s woes as arising from union/labor cost woes but this is — to put it bluntly — bullsh*t. The company’s management is bleeding the company to appease the greens. It continues to go along with “electrification,” much as some people continue to get their “boosters.” The company sluiced $5 billion to Rivian — the device manufacturer of $70k-plus electric trucks and SUVs that cost Rivian $30k each to sell — as part of a “partnership” to develop more devices.
Hari meet Kari.
The ‘State-Mandated’ Supply Chain
The same, by the way, is happening to Stellantis, or at least to the Dodge and Chrysler brands owned by Stellantis. They no longer sell the models that Dodge and Chrysler buyers want to buy. They sell hardly anything at the moment. Chrysler is down to just one model — the Pacifica Minivan — and Dodge has nothing to offer other than the Hornet, a small crossover that’s a far cry from a Charger or a Challenger and the leftover Durango, which probably won’t be around for much longer, either.
Carlos Tavares, the CEO of Stellantis, said the other day that there is no longer a market for cars; rather there is a “state-imposed supply chain.” The industry manufactures what the government demands, the market be damned.
Exactly so.
The disease process has entered its terminal stage. These companies haven’t got much time left.
Just as was intended by the pushers of “electrification.” Of a piece with what was intended by the pushers of “vaccination.”
Behold the results.
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