Volkswagen is on a mission to dethrone Toyota as the world’s top volume automaker and its 2011 sales are right on track.

For the first time ever at Volkswagen, more than two million passenger vehicles were delivered during the first five months of the year: The total through May tallied 2.09 million vehicles. That record marks a 12.2 percent increase compared to the 1.86 million vehicles in the same period of 2010.

VW also pointed out that its momentum appears to be picking up, as May saw a jump of 16.1 percent from 376,100 vehicles in May 2010 to 436,400 vehicles sold in May 2011.

“Our positive trend continued in May and we have posted yet another delivery record,” Christian Klingler, board member for sales and marketing for the Volkswagen Group.

The regional breakdown shows 792,100 vehicles sold in the Asia-Pacific region, up 18.9 percent, with 714,200 of those sold in China alone. North America saw the sale of 194,600 VW vehicles, up 19.7 percent compared to the previous year. In Central and Eastern Europe, VW enjoyed a 40.2 percent jump in sales to 71,900 vehicles, with Russia up 99.1 percent to 34,400 units sold.

VW’s home market of Germany took delivery of 248,800 vehicles, a 3.6 percent increase compared to 2010.

Perhaps the most influential player in the transformation of Volkswagen from near bankruptcy into a juggernaut comprising numerous brands and vying with the likes of Toyota and General Motors Company [NYSE:GM] for the title of world’s largest automaker, Ferdinand Piech, the grandson of Beetle inventor Ferdinand Porsche and current chairman of the VW Group has announced his resignation.

The decision was largely out of his hands, however, as the auto giant supervisory board executive committee, which represents the shareholders, decided at a special meeting held yesterday that internal strife between Piech and VW CEO Martin Winterkorn had led to a breakdown in the “mutual trust” necessary ‎for successful cooperation of between senior members at the company.

It was recently made public that Piech was displeased with Winterkorn but fortunately for the VW CEO he has the full backing of supervisory board, which plans to extend his current contract beyond 2016. This was not the case for previous CEO Bernd Pischetsrieder, who also ruffled the feathers of Piech and was forced to resign after just four years on the job. He was replaced by Winterkorn at the start of 2007.

Because of this breakdown in trust, VW confirmed in a statement that 78-year-old Piech has resigned from the supervisory board and from all mandates as a supervisory board member. Piech’s wife Ursula, also a member on the supervisory board, has also resigned, the statement read. Despite their exit, both still have significant voting rights and shares in the company.

In the meantime, senior trade unionist Berthold Huber will fill the role of chairman. Under his stewardship, representatives of shareholders and employees will in close cooperation determine the candidates for a new chairman, with the final outcome to be decided by the supervisory board.

Piech served as VW CEO from 1993 to 2002, turning a loss-making operation into one of the most profitable in the industry after making the hard decision of cutting wages and streamlining much of the production, which included the move to modular platforms. It’s believed he became displeased with Winterkorn due to VW’s recent cost blowouts, failure to grow in the lucrative U.S. market and failure to engineer a low-cost car.

Billions of dollars have already been wiped from VW Group’s market capitalization as a result, and the automaker could potentially lose billions more through fines and litigation. The scandal has already cost CEO Martin Winterkorn his job, with Porsche boss Matthias Müller promoted to the top role. And it’s likely more senior managers will also be pushed aside, namely those from the automaker’s R&D division.

The crisis has also caused the VW Group to accelerate a restructuring of its numerous brands, a move that’s been in the planning for years. Recall that the VW Group controls more than a dozen brands and has more than half a million employees around the globe. Such complexity is difficult to oversee by a central authority, so the automaker is creating separate units that will focus on specific brands and regions.

For the brands, they will be grouped around core platforms or “toolkits” as they are referred to by the automaker. These toolkits feature standardized technical components for each automotive vehicle segment (volume, premium, sport and commercial vehicles). Consequently, a Porsche brand group with Bentley and Bugatti will be established for the sports car and mid-engine toolkit.

The Audi brand group will keep its current structure which includes Lamborghini, Ducati and design house ItalDesign, and other groups such as those for commercial vehicles, power engineering and financial services will also keep their current structures.

The volume brands Volkswagen, SEAT, and Skoda, meanwhile, will each be treated as a separate group and have a representative on the Group Board of Management. And VW, the largest and most important of VW Group brands, will also get four new regional hubs with greater autonomy. One of these will be a new North American region encompassing the United States, Mexico, and Canada. Each of these regional hubs will have its own local CEO with a direct reporting line to the VW brand boss Herbert Diess.

Finally, responsibility for production will now be decentralized. This is one consequence of delegating responsibility to the brands and regions.

“The new structure strengthens the brands and regions, gives the Group Board of Management the necessary leeway for strategy and steering within the company, and lays a focus on the targeted development of future-oriented fields,” interim chairman Berthold Huber said in statement.

The top level of management at the VW Group will still have some significant responsibilities. These will include company-wide efficiency and future-oriented goals, plus decision making for future product strategy, new business fields, cooperations and holdings, connected car activities, and CO2 reduction strategies.

WASHINGTON -- Volkswagen of America’s sales plummeted in November amid tight dealer inventories and a continued sales freeze of diesel-powered cars prompted by its emissions violations.

VW said today its sales dropped 25 percent to 23,882 vehicles, its second-lowest monthly total of 2015 behind January. It was the steepest monthly decline for the VW brand since the start of the Great Recession.

The November decline reflects a 2,381-unit reduction in sales of non-diesel models in addition to shortfalls caused by the TDI sales freeze, which last month grew to include Touareg SUVs powered by the 3.0-liter V-6 diesel in addition to the 2.0-liter models that were grounded in September.

VW, in a statement, blamed the declines on the stop-sales orders.

“Volkswagen is working tirelessly on an approved remedy for the affected TDI vehicles,” VW of America COO Mark McNabb said in the statement. “During this time we would like to thank our dealers and customers for their continued patience and loyalty.”

Diesels accounted for 5,462 of the 31,725 VW vehicles sold in November 2014, according to VW of America. After adjusting for the loss of diesels, deliveries of all other VW models models fell by 2,381 units from November 2014, or 9 percent. VW’s highest-volume nameplates were among the hardest hit, with Jetta compact sedan sales falling 23 percent and Passat midsize sedan deliveries dropping 60 percent.

The brand’s roughly 650 U.S. dealers also had to battle tight inventories last month. Dealer stocks at the beginning of November were at their lowest levels of their previous 12 months, according to data from TrueCar.com. There were a few bright spots: Tiguan compact crossover sales surged 88 percent to 3,907 units while strong deliveries of the electric e-Golf and GTI hot hatch kept the Golf family afloat, posting a 3 percent gain.

Through 11 months, the VW brand’s U.S. sales were down 4 percent to 318,484 vehicles.

Audi growth slows

Audi of America posted a small gain -- 0.4 percent -- in U.S. sales last month, its smallest monthly gain since Feb. 2014. Yet the 16,700 vehicles Audi sold last month was enough to set Audi’s 59th-consecutive monthly U.S. sales record, the company said in a statement.

An Audi spokesman said the results were driven by underlying economic factors and incentives from competitors. He said luxury demand has slowed some since the summer, which Audi is now feeling more strongly than it had in recent months. The Q7 crossover is also in sell-down mode ahead of the redesigned model’s launch early next year.

Audi also grounded models powered by 3.0-liter diesel V-6 engines that U.S. regulators said on Nov. 2 contained illegal emissions software. Audi’s 3.0-liter TDI V-6 engine is offered on new Q5, Q7, A6, A7 and A8L models. The Audi spokesman said the impact from the stop-sale on 3.0-liter diesel models was limited. Audi relies on diesels for far fewer of its sales than the VW brand.

Through November, Audi’s U.S. deliveries rose 12 percent to 181,803 as it aims to top sales of 200,000 in the U.S. market for the first time in a single year -- a goal that Audi of America COO Mark Del Rosso says is within reach.

“As we head into the final sales month, we are on track to achieve our sixth-consecutive record year and exceed 200,000 annual sales for the first time,” Del Rosso said in the statement. “We expect this strong momentum will continue into 2016 as we refresh some of our most popular models, such as the Audi Q7, A4 and R8.”

General Motors’ Mary Barra may choose to ignore Sergio Marchionne’s emails, but Volkswagen chief executive Matthias Müller is at least checking his spam folder in case the outspoken Italian sends a proposal to merge Fiat Chrysler and Volkswagen.

The VW CEO told reporters during the company’s annual investor conference that he is “not ruling out a conversation” with FCA CEO Marchionne to discuss a merger between the two automakers, Reuters reported. Weeks earlier, Müller (pictured below) had publicly denied any interest in speaking with Marchionne, saying, “We have other problems.”



The two automotive giants have winked at each other before. During the summer of 2014, rumors peaked that VW and FCA would merge their combined 20 car brands into a giant entity. Both companies denied any possibility, only to see Marchionne aggressively court General Motors beginning in March 2015 (through at least one direct email to CEO Barra, if not by other methods). At the end of the following month, Marchionne made an unusual public pitch to investors—and specifically, to any automaker executive willing to listen—to promote industry mergers and decry what he called “unacceptable” capital spending and the “pure economic waste” that occurs when competing automakers develop the same parts and technologies. He said FCA was not up for sale but was searching for a “partner,” a word he has continued to use, for instance while discontinuing the Dodge Dart and the Chrysler 200 for lack of, you guessed it, partners.

Despite taking the equivalent of a $6.7 billion charge for the diesel scandal, the VW Group was still highly profitable in 2016, raking in $5.7 billion after taxes. It lost $1.5 billion in 2015 when the scandal broke in September that year. FCA recorded a net profit after tax of $1.9 billion, or nearly five times its net profit, in 2015. No other discussions between the two automakers are known at this time.

In 2017, Volkswagen offered an excellent six year and 72,000 mile bumper-to-bumper warranty on select models for folks who were considering the brand but were perhaps a bit apprehensive about its reputation for problems and expensive German repair bills. Nothing lasts forever, though, and that includes sweet warranty deals. VW will be reducing the coverage to four years and 50,000 miles starting with the 2020 models.

According to Automotive News, Volkswagen was clear that the industry leading bumper-to-bumper coverage was a direct response to a lack of consumer confidence following the Dieselgate scandal. VW’s doing better these days, thanks to the Atlas and Tiguan, so maybe that giant “Please forgive us” warranty is no longer, uh, warranted

From the story:

The spokesperson said that most customers, especially those who leased VW products, never saw the full benefit of the program. While the warranty will be reduced to four years and 50,000 total miles, VW is still ahead of most manufacturer’s bumper-to-bumper programs and will offer 2020 model buyers two years of free maintenance.

In my own interactions with car buyers on a daily basis, the warranty, for the most part, was seen as a bonus but not a primary reason to buy a Volkswagen product. In my experience most folks that were apprehensive of VW’s build quality weren’t swayed by the additional coverage and purchased a different brand anyway.

However, the people that will really be impacted are the used buyers. Since buying a pre-owned vehicle usually carries a bit more risk than a new purchase, I did have several clients give a used 2018 Volkswagen a shot because of the remaining balance of the transferable six year/72,000-mile coverage. These pre-owned VW’s offered the best of both worlds in a car that already had some depreciation value built in but also plenty of remaining warranty left

While automakers typically don’t care about buyers in the secondhand market, those shopping for used Volkswagens a few years from now are going to want to pay attention to the warranty shifts between various model years.

FRANKFURT, Jan 16 (Reuters) - Volkswagen Chief Executive Herbert Diess said the German carmaker needs to accelerate its transformation to avoid becoming another Nokia , which lost its dominance in the handset market to Apple.

“The big questions is: are we fast enough?,” Diess told VW’s senior managers following a global board meeting on Thursday. “If we continue at our current speed, it is going to be very tough.”

The car was is longer a mode of transport and carmakers are no longer only manufacturers of vehicles, he said.

“The era of the classic carmakers is over,” Diess added. (Reporting by Edward Taylor; editing by Thomas Seythal)

https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/16/tech/...ope/index.html

Angela Merkel: Europe should make its own chips and electric car batteries

https://www.dw.com/en/german-family-...ust/a-51915671
German family-held firms: In Russia we trust
According to ZEW's most recent ranking, Russia was able to defend its top position as the emerging market that German family firms trust most. They said they were highly pleased with the skilled workers on the ground, but also mentioned the favorable situation pertaining to taxation and low energy costs in Russia.

It looks like Volkswagen North America is seriously considering the idea of energizing its lineup of vehicles by offering more performance-oriented models in the near future. Coming from a quick chat with VW North America Chief Operating Officer Johan de Nysschen, Motor Authority revealed that the brand is ready to expand beyond the Golf R and GTI. "Winning over the hearts and minds of enthusiastic opinion leaders in their own circle of associates (is good), and people who are car nuts tend to be drawn to those more aspirational models...If you have them in your portfolio, ultimately you raise brand appeal," he said.

Of course, it's not as simple as just picking and choosing from a list of specs and equipment. De Nysschen said that the costs could be staggering, estimating that putting a new powertrain in an existing model would cost, at the very least, $20 million. He also said that while they won't be considering performance variants for all their models in the future, new variants for key models are definitely being considered. Mitigating costs could be done, he said, with the brand's shared architectures, such as the VW battery-electric MEB platform, and even building the cars in the United States would help drive down some of the costs. "We need to be smart about what we think we can bring to the market, and where we find traction. The Golf R today reliably sells—day in and day out...I think that shows a little bit the potential for the brand, but we need to temper our enthusiasm."

De Nysschen joined Volkswagen of America last year after leading efforts of Cadillac and Inifiniti in introducing high-performance models. He was faced with the challenging task of building up the brand's SUV lineup and regaining customer trust after the widespread diesel scandal. "We've tracked brand trust and confidence, and it took a dive. We've been working very hard to regain that and we have made good progress," he said.

Volkswagen's Atlas Tanoak is one of those concept cars that feels like it's been shown off for eons now, but it looks like all of that teasing and rotating on auto show stands is finally coming to an end because VW now says the truck isn't going to production. From VWVortex, VW USA Product Marketing & Strategy Senior VP Hein Schafer told journalists at the Chicago Auto Show that "in terms of platform limitations, and I in terms of sheer volume capacity to be able to do something like that, it just doesn’t pencil. So that concept is still pretty much dead."

Schafer goes on to explain the decision by pointing to the poor sales performance of that other crossover-based (read: car-based) non-American pickup: the fantastic Honda Ridgeline.

"So, you’ve basically spent a hell of a big investment to, at best, deliver a Honda Ridgeline, which is sitting at what? Three, four percent of segment," the VW exec said. "And that’s the difficulty. If you don’t do the job right—I mean how do you take on an F-150 or a Toyota Tundra?"

And as much as we'd like a new VW pickup to play with, Schafer has a point here. It's no secret that American pickup truck buyers overwhelmingly prefer American pickup trucks, so any competitor that doesn't wear a Ford, Ram, or Chevy badge is always going to be fighting an uphill battle.

In case you don't know, the Honda Ridgeline is actually assembled in Alabama, a fact Honda should consider stamping onto the side of every Ridgeline if it wants to sell more of them.

Volkswagen North America's recently appointed COO, Johan de Nysschen, echoed Schafer's sentiments, highlighting the struggles even Toyota's body-on-frame trucks have had in the pickup market. "You know, Toyota has been trying forever with competent vehicles. Nissan have been trying forever and the American manufacturers kind of have that tied up," de Nysschen remarked. "So if you try to do a me-too, I don’t think you’ll get anywhere even if it’s just as good or better."

For those out of the loop, the Tanoak was supposed to be an Atlas-based pickup powered by a 3.6-liter V-6. While the Tanoak isn't likely materializing anytime soon, all hope isn't lost for VW's other potential truck, the Ford Ranger-based Tarok, with Schafer describing it as "more a lifestyle vehicle, and I would see it more kind of appealing to someone who’s potentially looking for a more rugged-looking SUV."

Beyond the Tarok, de Nysschen even touched upon the recent trend of electric trucks and the possibility of VW using the shakeup as an entry point. "Electrification is like a reset for everyone," said de Nysschen. "And it’s changed the definition of the product concept. And while brand loyalties no doubt will continue to play out in the future, that could represent an opportunity for us."

In the meantime, those looking for a Volkswagen pickup will just have to stick to Smyth-kit Beetles a little bit longer.