Volkswagen, Germany's automotive giant and the parent company of brands including Audi, Skoda, Porsche, Bentley, Seat and Cupra, is preparing a sweeping restructuring that could eliminate up to 100,000 jobs worldwide and close four factories in Germany, according to reporting by Germany's Manager Magazin, citing insider sources. The supervisory board is expected to discuss the proposals at a meeting on 9 July. The company declined to comment on specific details, with a spokesperson saying it would not "pre-empt the process" — but did not deny the substance of the reports.

The four German sites facing potential closure are the VW plants in Hanover, Zwickau, and Emden — a port city in the northwestern state of Lower Saxony where the plant employs around 8,000 workers in a town of just 50,000 — as well as an Audi facility in Neckarsulm, in southwestern Germany. The proposed cuts would roughly double the 50,000 job reductions Volkswagen had already announced earlier this year, and go significantly beyond the 35,000 German positions the company agreed to cut by 2030 in a deal with unions at the end of 2024. The company employs around 657,000 people globally. Chief Executive Oliver Blume has also been considering spinning off the core Volkswagen brand into a separate entity as part of a broader "Target Image 2030" strategy, according to reports.

The company's spokesperson pointed to a combination of structural pressures driving the overhaul: surging energy costs, rapidly growing competition from Chinese electric vehicle makers, difficulty navigating the transition away from combustion engines, and US import tariffs on European cars. "Our current business model no longer works across all brands: developing cars in Germany, producing them in Europe and exporting them to the world," the spokesperson said. "The world has fundamentally changed." While Volkswagen briefly reclaimed sales leadership in China — the world's largest auto market — in early 2026, Chinese manufacturers such as BYD continue to make deep inroads into European markets, with hybrids and EVs at increasingly competitive prices.

The announcement has triggered immediate and forceful pushback from labour representatives. IG Metall, Germany's powerful industrial union, together with VW's works council, issued a joint statement vowing to fight the plans "with all our strength", accusing management of making "irresponsible threats" against worker protections and factory sites. The premier of Lower Saxony, Olaf Lies — whose state holds a 20% stake in Volkswagen and has seats on its supervisory board — also declared his opposition to any plant closures. Some analysts suggest management may be floating an extreme position in order to secure concessions, knowing the proposals are likely to be scaled back through negotiations. Whether the final plan reflects the reported figures or something more modest, the underlying crisis facing Europe's largest carmaker — and one of the world's biggest — is not in dispute.