During a planned meeting with executives, Volkswagen Passenger Cars CEO Thomas Schäfer admitted that the company was on its way to ‘hard times’, that ‘everything was at stake’, and called upon the managers to cut costs wherever possible.
Among other things, Schäfer pointed out prohibitively high spending across many areas and warned that the very financial stability of the company was affected by it. He said the costs needed cutting as soon as possible and also criticized the company’s internal processes as too slow and inflexible.
In all likelihood, Schäfer’s criticism primarily referred to the development and production of new electric vehicles, the sales of which fell far behind the expectations. This circumstance aggravates the already-present issues of VW Passenger Cars.
According to Autoevolution, the automaker ranks second in the list of car companies with the biggest external debt. Its volume was last revealed in February this year and amounted to $166 billion. Failure to manage the debt may prevent VW from achieving its next stated goal of becoming the world leader in EV production.