Jens Asbjørn Bøgen
The new job cuts bring total planned headcount reductions to 100,000 through 2030.
The board of the Volkswagen Group has approved “Future Plan 2030,” doubling previously planned workforce reductions to roughly 100,000 positions worldwide.
The company’s supervisory board unanimously approved the package on September 3, 2026, cutting roughly 50,000 positions from a global workforce of about 650,000 and streamlining the group’s model portfolio by around 50 percent by 2035.
This comes on top of about 50,000 layoffs already agreed under an earlier program.
It reaches every brand in the Volkswagen Group, every European factory, and much of what customers have come to recognize as a VW showroom.
The board also declined to guarantee future production allocations for four German plants: Emden, Zwickau, Hanover and Audi’s Neckarsulm site.
A sustainable and competitive production structure for those facilities is to be developed by the end of June 2027, according to the group’s own statement.
Why the cuts are so deep
Volkswagen says European plants can build more than 500,000 vehicles a year beyond what the market absorbs.
The 2030 plan targets 9 million annual sales and a 9 percent operating margin, roughly 31 billion euros in operating profit, alongside 135 billion euros in capital spending and research from 2027 through 2031.
CEO Oliver Blume framed the vote as a joint decision. “The Supervisory Board has unanimously approved the Executive Board’s Future Plan presented today. This is a strong signal for the future of the Volkswagen Group,” he said in the company’s press release. Chairman Hans Dieter Pötsch said the transformation is “being driven forward with full force.”
Union support, with a warning shot
The plan cleared the board only after IG Metall, Germany’s largest industrial union, and the group works council signed on. Works council chair Daniela Cavallo called it “a necessity to lead our Group successfully into the next decade, without placing the burden of that transformation solely on employees.”
The union side did not soften its view of how the plan came together. IG Metall chief Christiane Benner and Cavallo said in a joint statement, reported by CleanTechnica, that “the confrontational approach and communication by the management board in recent weeks were not constructive.”
Volkswagen has not yet published a plant-by-plant timeline for the 50,000 additional job cuts.
The next fixed date on the calendar is June 30, 2027, the deadline for the group to present a viable production plan for Emden, Zwickau, Hanover and Neckarsulm.
The plants and the models on the line
The four sites together build much of Volkswagen’s electric lineup. Emden assembles the ID.4 and the ID.7 sedan, Hanover produces the ID.Buzz electric van, and Neckarsulm assembles the Audi e-tron GT. Zwickau, converted several years ago into an all-electric site as the centerpiece of Volkswagen’s post-diesel identity, also builds the ID.4.
Existing production allocations at the four plants run out between 2031 and 2034, and the board has not committed to renewing them.
That decision reframes Volkswagen’s EV story: the same Zwickau plant that anchored the group’s electric pivot is now one of four in Germany without a guaranteed vehicle after the current cycle ends.
