1
How important is the Chinese market to Volkswagen ?
Volkswagen CEO Diess replied: "The bonuses of Volkswagen employees are all contributed by the Chinese, and 4 billion euros of net profits return from China to Germany every year."
In order to maintain its strong position in China, Volkswagen headquarters employs 15,000 R&D personnel , specializing in studying the needs of Chinese car owners; Shanghai Volkswagen has a small team that collects the preferences of Chinese car owners and reports to the CEO himself every week.
There is no doubt that Volkswagen is the king of the fuel vehicle era. It sells more than 3.5 million fuel vehicles in China every year, accounting for almost half of its global sales. It beats BBA, which has the same culture and type, and is the world's largest car company. Toyota .
The masses cannot lose China, just like the West cannot lose Jerusalem . If the Chinese market is lost, what will happen to the bonuses of German employees?
However, in the era of electric cars, Volkswagen seems to be really losing the Chinese market.
Looking at sales alone, from January to June this year, Volkswagen sold a total of 78,000 electric cars in the north and south, while BYD sold 630,000 electric cars during the same period. The difference between the two was 550,000 cars, which is not in the same order of magnitude. If "electric car" is replaced by "gas car", the data of the two brands may be reversed.
Volkswagen electric cars are not only inferior to BYD and Tesla , but also the newly promoted Wei Xiaoli. North and South Volkswagen ranks 14th and 15th on the electric car sales list respectively, sharing the same fate.
No wonder some car enthusiasts complained: "There is nothing wrong with buying a Volkswagen for a gas car. There is nothing wrong with buying a Volkswagen for an electric car."
Why are people who buy Volkswagen electric cars criticized as having a "bad brain"? Just look at the pure electric golf, Lavida , and Bora that Volkswagen hastily launched two years ago to know what an IQ tax is.
The production platform is the same as that of oil trucks, which is known as "quality inheritance". In addition to being able to charge, the electric cars made have no sense of technology at all. The interior continues the usual industrial style of oil trucks, and the experience is extremely poor. , it is better to buy the same type of oil truck.
Later, Volkswagen summed up its experience and felt that it was really unreasonable to fool the Chinese people by "changing oil to electric ". Nowadays, Chinese car owners know more about cars than each other. When it comes to car configurations, they know better than the designers. This time they must be corrected. Some goodies.
Last year, Volkswagen launched MEB, a pure electric car production platform, and officially put into production real electric cars, instead of replacing oil with electricity. It was full of sincerity and brought a new pure electric car to Chinese consumers - the ID family.
results, let’s take a look at the interior of ID.3.
There is always an indescribable feeling. You would say it has not changed. The electronic screen has been equipped and an intelligent operating system has been installed. But it has changed. It still has a traditional oil car interior feel, and I feel like I am still driving. Santana . There is no sense of surprise and no interest in buying it.
But this ID.3 is the best-selling electric car in Europe, with sales of 72,000 units a year and 6,000 units in China in half a year.
So old German fans started talking about German quality again. This is also the common saying used by Volkswagen 4S stores when selling electric cars.
For example, "real cruising range", "real safety quality", "smart driving experience" and "car-machine system close to life" are explained everywhere: it is not that Volkswagen's electric cars are "original", it is Volkswagen that insists on quality, low-key luxury and connotation , much better than those domestic shell cars!
When he said this, even Volkswagen CEO Diess himself did not believe it. In order to persuade Volkswagen employees to change their minds and give up gasoline vehicles, he did not hesitate to fall out with the labor union and risk losing his high-paying jobs to promote reforms.
2
Volkswagen faced an embarrassing situation in the tram era. The top management wanted to make changes, but the workers were not happy.
As early as 2015, Volkswagen CEO Diess proposed transformation, saying that the battle for future automobile technology routes was over, electric cars had won, and Volkswagen would go all out to transform electric car production.
The CEO is waving the flag and shouting, but the grassroots employees are motionless. The three core parts of an oil truck are the engine, gearbox, and chassis; the three core parts of an electric car are the motor, battery, and electronic control.
Volkswagen workers have been dealing with oil trucks all their lives and have accumulated rich experience. Now they suddenly say, "Oil cars are outdated, let us learn to build electric cars from scratch!" They cannot accept it in their hearts.
Coupled with the high welfare of the public, such as forty days of paid vacation a year, which is equivalent to the monthly salary of a university professor, getting off work on time, and working 35 hours a week, employees will have trouble if they want to reform. The disadvantage of high welfare is to support lazy people. mass company really happened.
Volkswagen has 670,000 workers. Most of the work has been replaced by robots. The workers are only responsible for quality inspection and some processes that must be completed manually. The work is easy and pleasant.
Chinese companies encounter this problem. For example, Huawei will send their old employees who are dawdling to Africa to prevent them from staying in the office for retirement and rekindle their entrepreneurial enthusiasm; Alibaba will start "rolling layoffs" Deliver talents to society. If workers are disobedient, there are many ways to do it.
but not in Germany. Volkswagen wants to reform and is restricted by three forces: the first is the board of directors, such as the Porsche family. These shareholders do not participate in daily operations and only decide strategic direction and major personnel appointments; the second is the senior management team, who are employed by the board of directors. , is responsible for daily operations, and CEO Diess is the executive representative; the third share is the labor union. The German labor union participates in corporate decision-making. It has its own representative on the board of directors and can veto any decision that is not beneficial to workers.
In addition, there is a tripartite committee led by the government to coordinate the opinions of the three parties to prevent labor conflicts from getting too big, affecting business operations, and thus affecting Germany's competitiveness. Normally, the German government's butt is on the side of the workers.
The transformation of trams was boycotted by labor unions. The workers were unwilling to learn how to make trams, saying they wanted to maintain Germany's proud tradition. In fact, I am just lazy and don’t want to learn new knowledge.
CEO Diess has received the support of the board of directors, senior management team, and government to forcefully promote the transformation. Those who express their unwillingness to learn from trams will be fired.
The labor union saw that even the government was on the side of management and that the situation was over, so they reluctantly accepted the tram reform measures.
But most of them still can't change their thinking. They stay in the glory of the past, know nothing about on-board software, and still design and produce electric cars based on the idea of oil trucks.
A senior Volkswagen car enthusiast said to me: "Volkswagen has nearly a century of experience in making cars, and its technical foundation is beyond the capabilities of domestic manufacturers. The backwardness is temporary."
Maybe Volkswagen workers think so too, but what they don't know is that electric cars A tram and a gas car are essentially two types of vehicles. Overtaking a gas car by a tram does not mean overtaking on a curve, but by changing lanes to overtake.
3
Volkswagen plans to overtake Tesla in three years and become the world’s number one electric car brand. Last year, Tesla delivered 930,000 electric cars and Volkswagen 450,000. Taking into account Tesla’s expertise in the electric car field, is Volkswagen bragging?
Believe it or not, CEO Dis believes it. He said with confidence: "Tesla's biggest weakness is the supply chain, which will exhaust Musk."
As we all know, Tesla is an assembly company. In the factory, all Tesla hardware must be obtained from various suppliers and assembled in the super factory.
A Tesla has more than 5,000 parts, and it has to contact more than 5,000 suppliers. In order to reduce costs, the parts have to arrive at the same time, and there cannot be inventory. The difficulty of supply chain management can be imagined.
Due to supply chain management problems, Tesla factories in the United States and Germany have fallen into a situation where they have no cars to build. The number of orders has been rising, but there are only so many parts and they cannot increase production.
Musk complained: "These two factories are like a big furnace, constantly burning money." The only thing he can count on is the Shanghai factory, hoping that Shanghai can use China's complete industrial chain to undertake higher production tasks.
In fact, since the first Tesla factory started construction, supply chain management issues have been plaguing Musk like a nightmare. He believes in the super factory theory, unlike traditional factories that accumulate inventory to prepare for emergencies.
Tesla practices "production based on sales" and "just-in-time production", with zero inventory of parts and complete vehicles. This places extremely demanding requirements on the supply chain. Whether it is a shortage of chips or batteries, it will affect Tesla's production efficiency.
Volkswagen does not have such troubles. Thanks to Germany's strong automobile manufacturing tradition, Volkswagen has a high self-sufficiency rate in parts and does not need to rely on external supply chains. With the blessing of brand power, it is not impossible to surpass Tesla.
But from now on, it is very difficult. Volkswagen's top management has a full understanding of trams, but the grassroots employees are still confused and follow the path of oil trucks to build trams. They do not have a deep understanding of the transformation from mechanization to intelligence, and they do not even have intelligent technology.
Volkswagen would not have spent 1 billion to purchase autonomous driving technology from Huawei. Volkswagen’s tram technology is still relatively weak.
It will take at least ten years for Volkswagen to catch up with Tesla and make Volkswagen electric cars unique. Just like Tesla has AI, BYD has batteries, Xpeng has driving, NIO has services, and Ideal has extended range. It is impossible to sell Tesla with just one Volkswagen brand.
Author: Jiangzuo Youan
Reference:
"New energy vehicle sales ranking from January to June 2022: Overtaking Tesla!" BYD ranks first in the world" NetEase
"German Volkswagen CEO Diess: Seriously underestimated China's contribution to Germany's prosperity"
"Volkswagen electric cars, China has had enough" Huxiu
"Volkswagen CEO comments on Tesla's new factory : Highly complex, it will exhaust Musk》
