Volkswagen Rumored To Close Four German Plants, 140,000 Jobs At Risk

EVs like the Volkswagen ID.4, ID.7 and Audi Q4 E-Tron could shift to lower-cost plants abroad, reshaping availability and pricing.

Volkswagen ID.7 production start in Emden, Germany (August 21, 2023)

Brian Potter

By: Brian Potter

Sep 3, at 6:07am ET

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Leaked supervisory board documents schedule factory closures: Emden and Zwickau in 2031, Hanover in 2032, and Neckarsulm in 2034.
The ID.4 successor is slated to move to Skoda's Mladá Boleslav plant in the Czech Republic.
Roughly 140,000 jobs are reportedly at risk in Volkswagen's broader restructuring.

Volkswagen's Emden plant switched entirely to the ID.4 in 2022, then added the ID.7 sedan, betting its future on electric assembly lines. Now that bet is the reason the plant may go dark first.

Leaked supervisory board documents, first reported by WirtschaftsWoche, lay out a schedule to end production at Emden and Zwickau in 2031, Hanover in 2032, and Audi's Neckarsulm plant in 2034. CEO Oliver Blume takes the plan into a supervisory board meeting on September 4, with roughly 140,000 jobs reportedly tied to the broader restructuring.

Euro-spec 2024 Volkswagen ID.4 exterior

Euro-spec 2024 Volkswagen ID.4 exterior

What Emden, Zwickau, Hanover And Neckarsulm Build Today

Emden currently builds the Volkswagen ID.4 and ID.7, both MEB-based electric models aimed at European, North American (excluding ID.7), and China buyers. Zwickau, with around 8,000 workers, runs an even broader EV slate: the ID.3, ID.4 and ID.5, plus the Audi Q4 E-Tron and Cupra Born, and it also bodies the Bentley Bentayga and Lamborghini Urus.

Hanover is VW's commercial-vehicle EV hub, building the ID.Buzz passenger and cargo van since 2022 after a modernization that added new body and paint shops. Audi's Neckarsulm site, one of the largest employers in the Heilbronn-Franken region, produces the A5, A6 and A8 alongside the electric E-Tron GT at its Böllinger Höfe facility.

That is four plants covering nearly every EV nameplate Volkswagen Group sells in Europe today, plus Audi's flagship sedan and its only halo EV. Losing all four inside a single decade would gut the group's current electric manufacturing base, not some legacy combustion footprint due for retirement.

As Reuters reported, Blume has already said publicly that VW cannot guarantee competitive capacity utilization at these four sites through the 2030s, though he has stressed no closures are formally decided.

2027 Audi Q4 E-Tron

2027 Audi Q4 E-Tron

Photo by: Audi

Where The Cars Would Actually Get Built

The leaked plan does not just close plants, it reassigns their cars. The ID.4 successor reportedly moves to Skoda's Mladá Boleslav plant in the Czech Republic, and the next Audi Q4 E-Tron shifts to Bratislava, Slovakia.

Hanover's electric van work reportedly transfers to Poznań, Poland, under the name B-Space, while the Audi A8 successor would relocate to Leipzig. Each move follows the same logic: cheaper labor costs and higher utilization rates outside Germany's most expensive manufacturing regions.

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Volkswagen has already trimmed its US EV lineup once amid slower demand, a retreat covered in our report on the ID.4's paused US availability, and the group has floated cutting its model range broadly, as detailed in our coverage of plans to reduce the VW lineup by half. Neither of those moves is confirmed as final, and the plants could stay open if they hit unspecified cost targets by 2027.

Motor1's Take: Volkswagen is trying to solve a cost problem that has been building for years, and these four plants sit on the fault line. Moving EVs and vans to cheaper sites might keep prices in check, but it also shows how fragile the brand's German electric footprint has become.