Posted on 10/20/2021 5:18:25 PM PDT by dennisw
BERLIN, Oct 20 (Reuters) - Volkswagen has produced just 300,000 cars at its main Wolfsburg plant so far this year, a company source with knowledge of the matter said, the lowest figure since 1958 and far behind its average output before the pandemic.
The plant, which makes cars from the Golf, Tiguan, and Seat brands among others, produced an average of 780,000 vehicles per year in the past decade and the company said in 2018 it aimed to boost this figure to a million.
But supply chain problems meant just under 500,000 vehicles made it off the assembly line in 2020. This year's output, first reported by Die Zeit weekly, is set to be even lower as the chip crisis sets in.
Volkswagen has previously said it would have a production shortfall in the high hundreds of thousands due to a lack of semiconductors, a problem plaguing automakers worldwide which the company expects to last well into 2022. A spokesperson said last week that discussions were underway to address the competitiveness of the Wolfsburg plant, which does not yet produce fully electric vehicles, particularly in the face of growing competition from new entrants such as Tesla. The comments followed reports that Volkswagen CEO Herbert Diess had said at a supervisory board meeting in September that a delay in the transition to electric vehicles could cost the company 30,000 jobs - one in four of its current employees.
(Reporting by Jan Schwartz and Victoria Waldersee; editing by Jason Neely)
(Excerpt) Read more at kitco.com ...
Chain links broken, no go for the people's wagon. Gonna get worse due to aluminum and magnesium shortages.
I’d say they produced their fewest in the 1940s....say from 1943-1945.
I have 3 from that plant [average age = 20 yr].
Can’t seem to generate much sympathy for VW. Too bad about those electric cars!
I have 3 from that plant [average age = 29 yr].
My bad...
My 1985 Jetta 1.6 diesel 5 speed was getting 50 mpg 30 years ago...I wish they would start selling diesels in the US again.
The one I bought 3 years old in 2015 was assembled in Me-he-co and it’s been the most reliable car I’ve ever owned including five I bought brand new.
So far, I replaced the battery and the thermostat (myself).
Tomorrow I’m going to replace the EVAP purge valve myself in hopes to clear the Check Engine Light.
This bugs me.
They produced quite a few Kübelwagens.
Big hairy deal, it’s only the largest factory in the entire world. It’s not like it’s a bad omen or nothing.
Not gonna happen, we can’t have anything efficient or something that doesnt pay the big power grid controllers. If so how about a big beamer diesel. A head to head with the prius a few years ago blew the prius away. And, they ran the air con and wafted comfortably along.
Do they realize that electric cars rely on chips just like gas cars do?
For my job I drove a VW Rabbit diesel in the early 1990s and loved it. Diesel engines have been so improved by VW for years. Then the US EPA comes along and screws VW out of about 18 billion in fines over air pollution testing. No wonder VW is making the move to bullshit EVs.
Also Honda was doing lots of R&D on diesel engines
_________
Engineering timelines are longer than those of media scandals, which has given Honda a predicament with its all-new i-DTEC diesel engine. The company’s decision to develop a next-generation ultra-clean turbo-diesel was made well before Volkswagen was caught getting its cheat on, but the finished 1.6-liter inline-four reviewed here in the Honda Civic is reaching its target market in Europe just as demand slumps for compression-ignition engines, thanks in large part to the Dieselgate scandal.
Too bad for Honda, which has been suffering in Europe for years. Sales on the Continent fell to just 140,000 last year, more than 50 percent below the peak reached in 2007 and less than a tenth of what the brand manages in the similarly sized U.S. market. But it’s also a shame because the new engine could well be seen by historians of late-era internal combustion, looking back decades from now, as representing the pinnacle of diesel technology.
https://www.caranddriver.com/reviews/a18642943/honda-civic-i-dtec-diesel-first-drive-review/
I am loving this. Is it clear to all that gloBULLism and free trade are a bust?
“I am loving this. Is it clear to all that gloBULLism and free trade are a bust?”
Great for China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan who all went the mercantilist route. You, me and others have been anti-free trade for at least 15 years here at FR. It took Donald Trump to wake up many of the free-traders here. Trump hit them over the head. With the Woo Flu and all their gain of function research, the CCP has proven they are our enemies. Now they have hypersonic nuclear missiles.
Undoubtedly at least 50% of that hypersonic R and D was stolen from us by Chinese students and professors living in America. The Chinese stole this research from Russia too!!! The stupid, greedy hacks in DC never made laws to prevent massive Chinese theft of our military and industrial intel and secrets. DC scum and hacks treated this as a joke, the same way they treated open borders for the last 30 years.
Our traitorous, liberal run, major universities threw open their doors to Chinese students and visiting thieving professors. Putting these Chinese spies and semi-pro spies into great positions to steal our FEDERALLY FUNDED research into everything! All they had to do was to insert an 8GB flash drive into the right unsecured computer OR download material in other ways. They did this also at Los Alamos which had a so called “open campus” policy where Chinese, Russians, any “visiting” foreign scientist could acquire our military nuke research, and other nuclear research.
I call them Free Traitors for a reason.
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