BERLIN (AP) \u2014 Volkswagen’s CEO indicated in comments published Sunday that he’s trying to avoid closing plants as he seeks to turn around the automaker’s performance.<\/p>\n
The Wolfsburg, Germany-based company faces pressure to cut costs at home and increasingly intense competition in the lucrative Chinese market, in particular.<\/p>\n
Last week, Volkswagen said its \u201cfundamental realignment\u201d over the past three years had reached its next phase, announcing plans to streamline the model lineup by up to half.<\/p>\n
It didn’t provide specifics, and questions remain over how else it will cut costs. There has been renewed speculation about the future of several plants in Germany.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are more intelligent solutions than closing plants,\u201d CEO Oliver Blume told the Bild am Sonntag newspaper.<\/p>\n
He added that a cost-cutting program in Germany already is producing effects. \u201cWe were able to improve our factory costs in Germany by an average 20% last year alone,\u201d he said, describing that as \u201cstrong progress.\u201d<\/p>\n
Blume argued that Volkswagen’s products are very popular, but \u201cwe just earn too little money with them. So we must continue to reduce our costs. In all kinds of costs.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BERLIN (AP) \u2014 Volkswagen’s CEO indicated in comments published Sunday that he’s trying to avoid closing plants as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":370156,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[69969,131118,131119,23681,59373,84874,59371,84875,86159,61262,82,84,83],"class_list":["post-370155","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-antonio","tag-germany","tag-germany-volkswagen-plants-blume","tag-oliver-blume","tag-package-100024-ap-online","tag-package-100373-mc-complete-state-national","tag-product-30597-ap-business-news-f-wire","tag-product-30598-ap-national-news-report-a-wire","tag-product-31995-ap-online-general-financial-business-news","tag-product-32502-ap-online-europe-news","tag-product-46986-ap-online-top-stories","tag-san-antonio","tag-san-antonio-headlines","tag-san-antonio-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370155","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=370155"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370155\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/370156"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=370155"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=370155"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=370155"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}