Is This the Beginning of the End for Volkswagen?

Europe's largest car maker Volkswagen is struggling with a transition to electric vehicles and competition from China, and has seen their stock price fall 60% in the last 3 years. So is this the end of the road for VW? Or can they turn this car around?

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[nadeemb]

"the people's car" has become unaffordable. Compare the average family being able to buy a mk 1 golf in the 70's to a family being able to buy a mk 8 today. In South Africa, VW's reached the point of being overtaken by Suzuki with Chinese brands also gaining popularity.

[kevinbarry]

Who would think that after decades of state support, and more recently building cars that deteriorate rapidly, and having management that has engaged in a giant criminal conspiracy, that this wouldn't be good

[Mrb-brawlstars]

Real reason VW sucks so bad
1. Cost cutting, vw use cheap materials for interior and engine
2. Expensive
3. Software is garbage

[swagathshetty]

They spent more time fighting the fire caused by dieselgate than focusing on evs

[MatthewJBD]

VW Group don't make great cars cars anymore.

Skoda is the exception

[foregonereality]

It's surprising they haven't considered one reason why people aren't buying - price.

[GeliCarlosJ]

They'll blame Chinese manufacturers and their "illegal subsidies" when they've been propped up by the German government for far far longer.

Too focused on share price & bonuses and not enough on making actual good cars that people want at reasonable prices.

[LewLew]

Poor quality and expensive products with little to no innovation will be there downfall. They forgot the their core market, the people’s car.

[Bryghtpath]

In 2015, Volkswagen was hit hard by the emissions scandal, losing billions in fines and market value. Yet, they bounced back. It’ll be interesting to see if they can do it again with the EV challenge.

[willeisinga]

The Consumer decides. Not Volkswagen Not Politics. No Sales No Volkswagen.

[Swariant]

Frankly, I used to be an avid Golf buyer since the Mk5, but the Mk8 is such a terrible product. The software and usability of that thing is atrocious, it truly makes me wonder how that was even approved. VW can’t blame the competition from china for losing its market share, their products just have been terrible lately. For some reason Germans are terrible at consumer end software.

[Shambles]

Volkswagen suppose to be a (people car) but if you look the price is so overpriced with full of cheap plastic interior

[bobjoe]

In a world where Android Auto and Apple CarPlay exist, why would one shoehorn half-backend software?

Since German Automakers know how to build hardware, why don't they go back to more knobs and physical buttons?

It is safer for a driver to operate buttons for important functions rather than fiddle with an imprecise and laggy touch interface. 😅

[alberto]

Guys, North-America isn’t just the US.

[rashkavar]

To be fair, it's worth noting that a lot of the engineering expertise that goes into the traditional internal combustion engine that Volkswagen and virtually every other major car manufacturer aside from BYD and Tesla have produced for the majority of their existence literally doesn't apply anymore.

Similarities between electric and ICE vehicles: A frame, an outer chassis, seating and interior, the driver interface (steering column, instrumentation, the pedals, and everything else you see or touch in a car while driving that is part of the car), wheels, and tires (tyres) (That's one American spelling that's standard here in Canada, it's very rare to see "tyre")

Differences: The power source. The engine. The means by which the engine receives power from the power source and converts it into kinetic energy. The means by which that kinetic energy is delivered to the tyres. The means by which instrumentation gets its information.

But...if you're a mechanical engineer who's been improving internal combustion car designs for the last 25 years...what do you think you've been working on? How fuel gets to the engine (carburator to fuel injection and refinements of those systems). The efficiency of the engine itself. The transmission and gearing. And the tyres...though those are generally handled by material specialists from tyre companies.

So yeah, you've got the car chassis, which anyone who understands aerodynamics will tell you is 99% driven by designer ideas and not by the physics of reducing drag. The frame, which...big surprise, it's a sturdy steel structure to which things can be mounted, there's not a lot you can do there without compromising strength and therefore safety. The interior, which is completely designer governed, and possibly a specialist in user experience. Wheels, which are mostly sturdy cylinders on which a tyre can be mounted that contain the system needed to mount to an axle. And tyres, which are largely being designed by tyre companies. There's not a lot of room for your classic mechanical engineer.

That's probably the biggest problem the traditional car companies are facing with this transition. They're having to fundamentally shift the kind of expertise they have from the systems that make sense for internal combustion to the systems that make sense for an electric vehicle. Some of them are agile enough to be handling that pretty well - Nissan, Kia, and a number of other companies all have respectable EVs on the market. But as we get further into the transition, the ones that are sticking to their guns and trying to rely on the same old solutions are going to face more and more difficulties.

[MarkWoodrow]

Tesla started the EV boom. China realised they can jump on it and mobilised quickly.
Legacy car makers were slow to react, banking on Hydrogen and saying BEV won't work and being generally pessimistic. Also changing course appears to be harder than starting up from scratch.

[murraysampson]

In Australia at least, the current offerings by VW pale in comparison to what they offered less than a decade ago. I recently sold my second VW and VW tried to get me to trade in on something new from them. I told them there is nothing in their range I’d consider buying now. Their service support is also appalling.

[starwarsnerd]

Vw are an economy car company who has drifted away from the economy market and chinese competion has been more than willing to pick up the gap. I wouldn't be too worried about vw in the long run, they have their hands in all the pots and are such a large company that germany wouldn't let it fail.

[pradeepmagan]

Concerning their rubbish ID cars and poor quality of their cars it’s not surprising

[ursicthepro]

I think you have gotten it wrong. The transition to evs was too fast, not too slow. Diesel engines were(are) their bread and butter, they are still relevant and in some metrics more ecological than electric engines. What they did was stupid, to let one scandal completely change their course. And EVERYBODY was cheating in the same way, vw were just the ones to make example of.