Oliver Blume-led Volkswagen, which is in the middle of a brutal restructuring due to its inability to address headwinds like slowing demand, Chinese competition and US tariffs, will ramp up its organisational revamp.
The declaration from Thomas Schaefer, Volkswagen’s brand head, came amid German auto workers conducting nationwide protests after the automaker’s profit warning highlighted sectoral challenges from high costs and fierce Asian competition.
The protests at Volkswagen, BMW and parts supplier Bosch have emerged in response to painful job cuts, possible production relocations and even plant closures for Germany’s most important industry in a crisis that has also become a crucial election issue in the European country.
“I had hoped that the measures agreed in 2024 would already be sufficient. Unfortunately, that has not been the case,” Schaefer told a staff meeting at the company’s Wolfsburg headquarters.
“We have absolutely no time to lose and will therefore significantly step up our performance programme once again,” he said, adding that the company and employee representatives will discuss how to proceed.
Europe’s biggest carmaker has made up its mind to cut a further 50,000 jobs (on top of the previously agreed 50,000) as part of a massive restructuring agreed with stakeholders a couple of weeks back, averting a full-blown dispute with powerful unions that still repeated calls on management to fix the issues.
Volkswagen works council chief Daniela Cavallo and IG Metall union head Christiane Benner, however, have called for stronger protection against “unfair competition” from China, along with measures like effective European Union (EU) subsidy policy and continuation of a phased vehicle retirement programme.
“We expect corporate leaders and management teams to take responsibility for Germany as an automotive nation, for employees and for jobs,” Benner told workers at Volkswagen’s headquarters.
Volkswagen has already cut its 2026 profit margin outlook to 1% at the most, blaming the sluggish Chinese market and higher provisions for retirements while also lowering expectations for its Porsche sports car brand.
The revamp, in all probability, also eyes the end of Volkswagen’s struggling Spanish marque Seat, potentially making it the first major auto-brand casualty of the rise of Chinese carmakers as experts predict sweeping industry consolidation.
Seat would be the first longstanding auto brand to disappear since the early 2010s, when Ford axed Mercury, General Motors dropped Saturn and Pontiac, and Saab went bankrupt.
Volkswagen said Seat’s future “beyond the current product cycle is still being evaluated”, adding that “various scenarios remain possible beyond 2030”.
As per Reuters’ report, Seat’s fast-growing sister brand Cupra, which is going electric, will get all future products as Seat’s combustion-engine models are phased out.
We would prefer to maintain one brand name, said the unnamed source who spoke with the outlet.
Established in 1950 as a state company, Seat was bought by Volkswagen in 1986 as a low-cost brand for its growing automotive empire.
However, the subsidiary didn’t launch a new model since 2020. In 2025, the Barcelona-based brand accounted for less than 3% of Volkswagen’s global deliveries in 2025.
Sister sports brand Cupra, launched in 2018, overtook Seat in annual sales for the first time in 2025.
Cupra offers three fully electric models, including the new Raval, which Seat-Cupra CEO Markus Haupt described in May as a “game changer.”
Seat, by contrast, has no fully electric models.