Volkswagen to cut down trim options for its cars

The top labour representative of the German automaker Bern Osterloh told a media gathering at the Volkswagen headquarters recently that the company plans to reduce the number of versions and trims available with its core brand. This will in turn reduce the complexity costs and allow Volkswagen Aktiengesellschaft to save money to the tune of €1.9 billion. The cost cutting would also involve the lowering of bonuses of top-brass officials of the company, instead of taking the job cut route. 

Osterloh said during the meeting that “we from the works council have long flagged the huge range of model variants and different components.” He further specified “that brings enormous complexity and adds to costs, for example, for logistics. We can take out costs there on a large scale and don't have to talk about job cuts.”

Osterloh admitted these major savings will be crucial for the brand in order to win back the trust of its customers given that many of them have expressed their reluctance as far as buying a new VW. A large chunk of the company’s engines including the 1.2 TDI, 1.6 TDI, 2.0 TDI EA189 engines and the 3.0 TDI V6 have all been red-flagged due to the various cheat devices installed.

In total, company boss Herbert Diess has pointed out that the Volkswagen brand will be able to save as much as €5 billion and doing so will require reducing annual investments by €1 billion. While the costs for the dieselgate damages have not yet been exactly revealed by VW, but they have approximated the car fixes to cost around €2 billion in Europe.