Audi has confirmed that it will cut up to 9500 jobs at its German production facilities in the next five years.
The decision, officially announced today, is claimed to free up €6 billion (£5.14bn) for investment in the company's burgeoning electric vehicle (EV) product offensive and digital technologies.
Audi employs around 62,000 workers in its home country, meaning around 15% of its workforce will be gone by 2025. However, it will extend its employment guarantee for its “core workforce” until 2029 and claims profit-sharing between workers will continue. It will also still recruit for new jobs.
Audi stated: “The company must become lean and fit for the future, which means that some job profiles will no longer be needed and new ones will be created. That is why Audi is investing systematically in future-oriented qualification measures for the employees and thus in the future of the two sites in Germany”.
Profits have taken a hit in recent months as Audi readies huge factories in Ingolstadt and Neckarsulm, with a combined annual capacity of 675,000 units, for EVs to be built. Higher-than-average personnel costs and substantial research and development investment are cited as reasons for the cutbacks.
Earlier this month, Audi rival Daimler confirmed it would cut 10% of managerial roles in order to save €1.3bn (£1.11bn) in personnel costs. At the time, the parenty company of Mercedes-Benz warned that the rollout of electrification would significantly harm its profits until at least 2021.
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Bottom Line
Please at least let the Brexit bull shit stop at the Autocar front page. The truth is nobody knows. It will, be at least 20 years before anybody really knows if it worked out well or not.
Bottom Line
Brexit damages industry in the UK, the warning signs are there and clear to read. Manufacturing investment is down, much worse drop than other European countries. That will start to bite more as it makes our productivity fall further behind. The fall in our currency without an improvement in exports also prooves that and it shows how less attractive to invest in the UK is.
There is a lot going on in the world and not all ills are caused by Brexit, but it does the UK no favours on the international stage. Simply put, it errects barriers to trade, it reduces British influence. And it wastes time in hot air and waffeling in this country when we should be fixing our internal problems.
what international companies are doing is reacting to the UK disadvantaging itself. They do not do it for politics but for ststements of facts as they see them. Time to wake up and smmell Brexit as the unpatriotic act it is.
Good points John. Not arguing
Good points John. Not arguing with them. Maybe right , maybe wrong. My point was, there are enough places to discuss Brexit, let's just keep Autocar about cars.
Strawman_John wrote:
Actuallly it reduces the EU influence and income, that is what the EU is most worried about
Ultimately all down to that
Ultimately all down to that tiny startup ..
Tesla
Lol!
Any remainers going to comment?
Another company loosing employees ( 15% of the workforce !). Why do remainers refuse to accept that joblosses in the car industry exist due to world economics and trends? If this were UK car manufacturing job losses, this thread would have been around six pages long by now and Mike Hawes would have been been going in to overdrive about how the real cause was actually Brexit.
Yes.
There is no denying that the car industry is going through change at the moment and that prompts moves like the one described.
When is the German car industry, dressed as a gallant knight, going to ride towards us saying "Never fear, the German government will agree to anything the English want to protect its car industry."? Never. That demonstrated the strange English inflated sense of self-importance. (I am English.)
JLR's problems are scale, product and market based. Nissan (UK)'s and Honda (UK)'s are about the UK no longer being a desirable place to build cars to gain access to a market.
It comes down to tariffs.
Facts first
NO, they moving because the EU went for the 'Cars for Cheese' deal. Only gains for Germans and French, losses for UK!
Thanks EU
scotty5 wrote:
nothing occurs in isolation. Yes, the car manufacturing industry is going through changes worldwide, but also Brexit is making the UK an unappealing place to (continue to) have factories due to uncertainty, no longer being part of a huge common market and probable tariffs.
Audi don't have manufacturing employees in the UK to lay off, if they did it's highly likely they'd be first to go.
Id be interested if the actual quote was that the saved wages were to fund EVs, hardly a way to get EVs popular with those ex employees, family and friends and the German populace in general. Odd if they're as committed to EVs as they claim to be.
Only in theory.
Correct me if I'm wrong but JLR has just opened a huge modern innovation centre here in the UK? How many new factories have sprung up in Germany, France, Holland, Spain, Portugal, Italy lately? I can certainly give you some examples of ones that have closed over there.
You mention UK being part of a huge common market ( a very old phrase if I may say so, it changed to European Union which is somewhat different but I'm happy to leave it at common market). What you haven't said is that that very same common market recently renegotiated import tariffs with Japanand that's the very reason Honda pulled out the UK or should I say EU ( as they have done elsewhere in the world ) and move production back to Japan. Honda pulled out BECAUSE of the common market, it had nothing whatseoever to do with Brexit.
I keep reading these hypothetical theories that folk have ( both from remain and leave sides ) but in practice it's exactly that - a theory. Real-world experience has proved to be somewhat different.