{"id":565937,"date":"2026-07-24T12:48:08","date_gmt":"2026-07-24T12:48:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/565937\/"},"modified":"2026-07-24T12:48:08","modified_gmt":"2026-07-24T12:48:08","slug":"vw-group-plans-major-reduction-of-up-to-50-of-models","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/565937\/","title":{"rendered":"VW Group plans “major reduction” of up to 50% of models"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Volkswagen Group aims to improve the quality and profitability of its cars by cutting up to half the models it sells,\u00a0as part of a strategy to dramatically reduce costs and complexity.<\/p>\n

The firm posted a dramatic drop in profits<\/a> in the first half of 2026, returning a margin of just 3.8%, which it says highlights the urgent need for a radical restructuring of the entire company.<\/p>\n

It plans to significantly cut its overheads by trimming up to 100,000 jobs globally, and reducing the amount of crossover and complexity in its vehicle line-up is another fundamental strand of its strategy to grow margins.<\/p>\n

Giving more details of the plan, which was announced earlier this month<\/a>, company CEO Oliver Blume told journalists that the firm is preparing \u201ca major reduction of up to 50% of our product\u201d in a bid to reduce manufacturing and development costs, while clarifying and strengthening the market positioning of its models.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want to focus our expenditures on clear-focused products \u2013 to improve innovations, to improve technologies, to improve equipment, and to improve the quality of the single products \u2013 then to achieve higher volumes with more focused products.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo achieve a higher profit margin per product \u2013 that\u2019s the intention.\u201d<\/p>\n

He added that the company knows it has \u201csubstitutions in some segments between the brands\u201d, referring to the significant degree of internal competition between equivalent models from the volume brands Volkswagen<\/a>, Audi,<\/a> Skoda<\/a>, Seat<\/a> and Cupra<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Volkswagen Golf<\/a>, for example, provides the basis for four other technically identical C-segment family hatchbacks from each of those sibling brands – with little variation in pricing, performance or equipment. It\u2019s the same story for the Polo supermini, T-Roc crossover and Tiguan SUV – and each of the Volkswagen Group\u2019s electric cars has at least one direct equivalent at a sibling brand, such as the Porsche Macan Electric and Audi Q6, for example.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The impending rationalisation will seek to alleviate some of this intra-brand competition by \u201ccleaning it up and reducing complexity\u201d, according to Blume.<\/p>\n

He said the firm will start by cutting its \u201chigh number of derivatives\u201d, referring to individual trim levels and equipment packages, which will account for the bulk of the cuts. Blume added that while the number of cars left in the resulting line-up \u201cwill still be far higher than what we see in the competition\u201d, it will nonetheless amount to a halving of the Volkswagen Group\u2019s portfolio.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Volkswagen Group aims to improve the quality and profitability of its cars by cutting up to half…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":565938,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[72,61,60],"class_list":["post-565937","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-ie","tag-ireland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/565937","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=565937"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/565937\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/565938"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=565937"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=565937"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=565937"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}