They lost a huge chunk of the Chinese market, which according to Wikipedia made up 40% of VW’s global market.
They’re still successful in Europe and elsewhere, but there’s no way to make up for the sudden disappearance of exports to China that they’ve had as a stable income since the 1970s.
It’s not coming back either, so they can’t do much other than scale down production.
It’s really unfortunate for VW and Europe in general, but we can’t really blame the Chinese for buying Chinese cars. If anything we can blame VW for not pulling the production home sooner. They (and many other European car manufacturers) have been way too gullible and overconfident. They have to get their shit together real soon if they want any chance to secure the home market too, otherwise that will also be covered by cheaper Chinese cars.
They lost a huge chunk of the Chinese market, which according to Wikipedia made up 40% of VW’s global market.
They’re still successful in Europe and elsewhere, but there’s no way to make up for the sudden disappearance of exports to China that they’ve had as a stable income since the 1970s.
It’s not coming back either, so they can’t do much other than scale down production.
It’s really unfortunate for VW and Europe in general, but we can’t really blame the Chinese for buying Chinese cars. If anything we can blame VW for not pulling the production home sooner. They (and many other European car manufacturers) have been way too gullible and overconfident. They have to get their shit together real soon if they want any chance to secure the home market too, otherwise that will also be covered by cheaper Chinese cars.