VW Floats Doubling Layoffs to 100,000 Amid 20% Cost Gap

Volkswagen’s plight echoes Detroit circa 2008–09, when legacy cost structures collided with an economic shock and rising Asian competition, forcing GM into a bankruptcy that shed 50,000 U.S. jobs. Today the shock is the EV pivot, Chinese exporters and tariff crossfire, but the structural issue is the same: an aging, high-cost manufacturing base fighting nimble, lower-cost challengers. Germany’s co-determination model—entrenched since the 1951 Montan Gesetz—gives labour and regional governments veto power, complicating rapid downsizing much as British Leyland’s union-political gridlock did before its 1975 bailout. Whether VW ultimately cuts 20,000 or 100,000, the episode signals a long-arc trend: Europe’s century-old mass-auto model is being hollowed out by global supply-chain realignment and software-defined vehicles. In a 100-year view, this could mark the moment when Germany’s flagship manufacturer either reinvents itself—like Toyota after the 1950 strike—or begins a slow fade akin to Britain’s car industry; the outcome will reverberate through European industrial employment, trade balances, and technological sovereignty well past mid-century.