VW wants to further streamline its range of cars. Models with small quantities should no longer have a successor, as brand boss Thomas Schäfer explained when presenting the new corporate strategy.
He explicitly names the coupé sedan Arteon. It is also already known that there will be no new editions of the Passat sedan and the compact van Touran in Europe. Instead, Schäfer wants to focus on core models, which should reduce complexity and improve the result. 99 percent fewer configuration options Within the streamlined range of models, a reduction in variants is also planned. The ID.7 electric sedan serves as a model, for which there are 99 percent fewer configuration options than with a Golf 7. In addition, the company wants to optimize the capacity utilization of its plants worldwide in order to increase profitability and react more flexibly to fluctuations in demand and the market can. The measures are part of a major austerity program with which the brand wants to improve its earnings by 10 billion euros by 2026. In the past two years, the core VW brand has not achieved much more than three percent return, now 6.5 percent are planned. In view of the difficult market environment, the Wolfsburg-based company wants to make more profit by investing and securing jobs. VW currently offers 20 different car models, not counting the commercial vehicle offshoots. It is not known how many series of these will remain in the long term. Numerous models such as the compact coupé Scirocco, the Van Sharan or the three-door versions of the Polo and Golf have already been canceled in recent years. The number of engine variants in the individual model families has also fallen.
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