Et is the greatest contrast a manager can experience in a matter of days. At the weekend, Volkswagen boss Herbert Diess was at the South by Southwest conference in Austin, Texas, to present the new ID Buzz electric model to young tech fans and Internet entrepreneurs. A few flying hours later, at the headquarters in Wolfsburg, he had to deal with the aftermath of the Ukraine war. VW has stopped business in Russia, while at the same time the lack of wiring systems from the Ukraine is paralyzing the factories in Germany. All of this could only be the beginning, warns Diess at the digital annual press conference. If the escalation continues, it is a threat to the world order, “which has brought peace and prosperity to many parts of the world in recent decades.” After Putin’s attack on Ukraine, prices for oil, gas and important industrial metals skyrocketed.
Components are also becoming scarce, especially cable harnesses, which are urgently needed in German vehicle factories. At the moment, VW is assuming that it will be able to compensate for production losses in its car factories over the course of the year, when the situation has eased and higher quantities are possible again. However, if it is not possible to replace wiring systems from the Ukraine with suppliers from other countries in Eastern Europe or North Africa within the next three to four weeks, the business plan and outlook of the group would have to be revised. Because of the bottlenecks in Europe, Diess also announced that it would temporarily prioritize production in America and China. It’s about 50,000 to 100,000 cars, which would now preferably be supplied there with scarce semiconductors, said the manager, who has been at the helm of VW for almost four years.