earlier this year.
VW was founded by the
Nazis in the 1930s as a project
to produce automobiles for the
masses. But for all VW’s market-
ing of itself as a German auto-
maker—“Das Auto,” thundered
a company slogan—its center
of gravity long ago began shift-
ing to China. Working through
joint ventures with state-owned
Chinese manufacturers, the VW
group now sells about 40% of its
vehicles in China—more than in
Germany, North America, and
South America combined. It is
China’s biggest automaker, wield-
ing a market share there last year
of 19%. Now—globally, but above
all in China—VW is attempting
to shift from builder merely of
the people’s car to builder of the
people’s electric car.
It essentially has no choice.
In Europe, its home market, the
company faces two stark realities.
The first is its own fault: In 2015,
VW’s reputation was shattered
by the revelation that its brass
had, for years, knowingly built
diesel cars that spewed excessive
pollution, and then repeatedly
lied about it to regulators. The
second, which some at VW see as
following from the first, comes in
the form of a regulatory headlock
from Brussels: a 2018 European
Union requirement that automak-
ers slash the carbon emissions of
their car fleets 37.5% by 2030.
VW, in the carbon wars, has
an outsize target on its back: It
coughs out fully 1% of global car-
bon emissions owing to the sheer
number of cars it puts on the road.
In China, the company now
ELECTRIC GOLD RUSH
Workers assembling Golf series vehicles at Volkswagen’s massive plant in Zwickau, Germany. VW will
spend $1.3 billion retooling the plant to manufacture electric vehicles almost exclusively.
ALEX KRAUS
—BLOOM
BERG/GETTY IM
AGES
SHOULDN’ T
THE
WORKPL ACE
BE A BET TER
PL ACE?
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