{"text":[[{"start":5.16,"text":"As goes Volkswagen, so goes Germany. That has been the commonly held view of the carmaker from the postwar reconstruction boom known as the Wirtschaftswunder to the present-day soul searching over the future of industry. That makes VW’s current predicament worrying not just in its home base but beyond."}],[{"start":22.32,"text":"A flurry of recent news has highlighted the potential for a fightback but also the scale of problems."}],[{"start":29.6,"text":"A big profit warning last week was followed by the company’s ignominious ejection this week from the Euro Stoxx 50, the Eurozone’s blue-chip share index. That undercut the carmaker’s announcement earlier this month of some unexpected progress — supervisory board approval for a painful but necessary restructuring, including up to 50,000 job cuts and potential factory closures."}],[{"start":51.32,"text":"VW’s issues run deep, ranging from a highly dysfunctional governance structure that includes workers, local politicians, unions and family shareholders to increasingly sharp competition from China. Veteran watchers of VW are asking: is this time different? Can Germany’s largest industrial employer push through real change for once, or will it stumble once again?"}],[{"start":74.4,"text":"“It’s tempting each time to drink the Kool-Aid on VW and believe,” says one long-suffering VW investor. “But time and again, some part of VW decides to defeat itself. I would not be betting on VW just yet.”"}],[{"start":null,"text":"
"}],[{"start":87.16,"text":"VW’s immediate problems are common to all of Europe’s carmakers. The one-time cash cow of China is disappearing from view as a combination of the growing sophistication of local manufacturers and protectionism of authorities squeezes out the likes of VW from what was once their biggest and most profitable market. “The world’s largest single market has slumped by 20 per cent, with no consolidation in sight. We cannot escape this trend,” said chief financial officer Arno Antlitz."}],[{"start":114.4,"text":"At the same time, US President Donald Trump’s tariffs make life difficult for European carmakers. The result is an increasingly fierce fight for Europe’s car buyers, even as cheap and technologically-advanced Chinese electric vehicles pour into the continent."}],[{"start":128.28,"text":"That lay behind VW’s decision to cut its volume target from 12mn vehicles a year before the Covid-19 pandemic to 9mn currently, with about half the reduction each coming from China and Europe. That in turn has led to massive overcapacity at many of VW’s factories, leaving the threat of closure over four of them."}],[{"start":149.4,"text":"“VW’s factories are some of the most inefficient I have ever seen,” says one former executive. “The first time I walked around Wolfsburg properly [VW’s main factory at its headquarters] I was just gobsmacked.”"}],[{"start":162.44,"text":"VW management — led by chief executive Oliver Blume — has responded with plans to cut jobs from their 2024 level of 647,000 by more than 100,000. That plan was initially resisted by workers and unions at VW, backed by the local politicians of its home state, Lower Saxony, which is VW’s second-largest shareholder and has an effective blocking minority due to a special law."}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":186.44,"text":"VW’s management threatened the unions and Lower Saxony with a novel legal workaround that could have blunted their influence, according to people familiar with the discussions — a tactic that led to unanimous approval for the cuts in the supervisory board where worker representatives and the state have a majority."}],[{"start":204.48,"text":"That suggests the underpinnings of VW’s truce between its rival factions of management, workers and politicians is fragile. And other parts of Blume’s ambitious plan — including closing four German factories and carving out its core business to weaken the supervisory board’s influence over all decisions — were watered down. (VW did not respond to a request for comment.)"}],[{"start":226.38,"text":"The VW investor says the risk, as always with the carmaker, is that it becomes self-obsessed rather than doing what it really needs to do: build better cars."}],[{"start":235.84,"text":"“VW spends too much time on itself, rather than worrying about what it should be hyper-focused on: the Chinese competition,” the investor adds."}],[{"start":244.4,"text":"For the first time in more than a decade, there is some optimism that VW could finally grapple with some of its longstanding issues, even as the far-right AfD party tries to use its fate to gather votes. But history rather suggests there is a long way to go given VW’s capacity for regular scandals and power struggles that have toppled every other chief executive who tried to reform the carmaker."}],[{"start":271.04,"text":""}]],"url":"https://audio.ftcn.net.cn/album/a_1790231020_9635.mp3"}