The cut represents 8% of the carmaker’s global workforce. It is the latest blow to the German automotive industry, which is already reeling from a stuttering shift to electric cars and stiff competition from China.
The head of the Audi division recently announced that their strategy for plunging sales is to juice prices up to the ragged edge of Bentley territory, so they take more money off of each of their shrinking number of customers, while rendering more workers and factories redundant. McKinsey strikes again!
Audi Is Moving Upmarket with Fancier, More Expensive Cars
Steve
Upgrading to extinction?
The Captain
Welchian “high grading”: culling whatever is the lowest ranked, to narrow their market to only the most profitable products, in only the most profitable markets.
Here is the CEO of Ford Motor, having eliminated all of their conventional passenger cars, because SUVs are more profitable, now talking about culling the less profitable of the SUVs.
“So I’m very optimistic about our eight percent because we are not going to be playing in the two-row commodity crossover market because that’s – because Ford’s tried that in the ICE business and it didn’t really work out for us,” Farley said when asked about the company’s profit margin target. “We want to play our hand, our strength, commercial, truck, larger vehicles on the category side.”
https://fordauthority.com/2023/02/ford-ceo-farley-says-company-is-done-with-two-row-ice-suvs/
Steve
Nope. Buy something worthwhile. Ford isn’t.