According to figures from the State Statistical Office from September, almost 42,000 men and women in Hesse are employed in the “manufacture of motor vehicles and motor vehicle parts”. The map also refers to this group: It shows the locations of companies that develop or manufacture vehicles and components for them and employ a total of at least 500 people in Hesse. Incidentally, the Mercedes and BMW sales organizations in Hesse are also in this size range; The German and European headquarters of foreign car manufacturers in the Rhine-Main area are somewhat smaller. Among the industrial companies listed, many do not work exclusively for the automotive industry: at the Schunk Group, for example, around 40 percent of sales come from the automotive sector, according to a spokesman business, the company therefore does not consider itself an automotive supplier. Conversely, there are numerous companies that do not produce car parts but are still indirectly dependent on the industry – for example because they produce pigments for car paint or Plastics used for interior trim or seats. Since such raw materials are suitable for many different applications, they were not taken into account here. However, if you add up all the companies in Hesse whose products are also used by the automotive industry, the number of employees is much higher: the consulting company IW Consult had 241,000 employees in 2022, a subsidiary of the German Economic Institute, in a study for the employers’ association Hessenmetall. Although this number would probably be somewhat lower today.Baunatal: Second largest VW plantSince the VW management in Wolfsburg announced the reduction of tens of thousands of jobs, fear has also been spreading in Baunatal in northern Hesse. The second largest German VW location is located here with 15,500 employees. On Friday evening, Volkswagen and IG Metall announced an agreement in their collective bargaining dispute. Among other things, it envisages cutting 35,000 jobs by 2030. However, there should be no factory closures or operational layoffs. Transmissions, electric drives, body parts and exhaust gas purification systems are manufactured in Baunatal, which are installed in vehicles from the Group brands Volkswagen, Seat, Audi, Skoda, Porsche, Lamborghini and Porsche. Three years ago, Volkswagen announced that it would invest around 1.2 billion euros in Baunatal by 2026. More than two thirds of this sum is intended for the development and production of e-components. However, there have been problems with one of the new systems in recent months, and at the beginning of this year, according to media reports, production of electric cars at the VW plant in Zwickau had to be throttled back. The bigger problem is now that sales of electric cars are slowing down especially in Germany is weakening. The cuts announced by Volkswagen are also due to the fact that the group is losing ground on the Chinese market. In the first nine months of this year, the company sold ten percent fewer cars in China than in the same period last year. How serious the consequences will be for Baunatal is still unclear. The VW board wants to impose wage cuts and has threatened to close up to three plants in Germany. On Monday, management met with representatives of the employee side for the fifth round of negotiations.Frankfurt: Continental before the split It has been a done deal since December 9th: The Dax group Continental, based in Hanover, wants to spin off its automotive division – and this division has its own Headquarters in Frankfurt. Here, the Hanoverians, traditionally known as tire manufacturers, acquired the brake manufacturer Teves in 1998 and began building a new mainstay, vehicle technology. Today this also includes software solutions for assisted and automated driving, which developers at Continental in Wetzlar are working on, for example, as well as display and control elements. The planned division is intended to transform the automotive division with around 100,000 employees nationwide into a largely independent one by the end of 2025 Companies are created, which also means an upgrade for the presumed headquarters in Frankfurt. But things have not been going well in the automotive market for years; the margins are much lower than in the tire and tube business. The job cuts announced in March will therefore continue, and Continental is also sticking to the closure of the automotive locations in Wetzlar and Schwalbach that was announced at the time. A total of 1,200 jobs are to be cut in the Rhine-Main area, half of them in Frankfurt. The job cuts also affect the plant in Babenhausen, although some of the employees from Schwalbach and Wetzlar will be taken on there in the future – just like in Frankfurt. The numbers on the map are from the end of September. In Frankfurt, the total number of employees has already shrunk by 250 compared to spring. According to a company spokesman, the relocation of jobs from Wetzlar and Schwalbach will not begin until 2025. It has long been decided to downsize the automotive site in Karben, where production of components for vehicle displays will end at the end of 2025. The number of employees will then fall from 450 to around 200. In addition, around 600 employees from the Conti Tech division work in Karben, which produces cables for drives and chassis for cars and trucks. Tubes are also manufactured at Conti Tech in Korbach, but tire production is much larger there. Incidentally, the company also wants to give up hose production in Oedelsheim in northern Hesse, but the factory works closely with the one in Hannoversch Münden in Lower Saxony; the number of employees for the two locations is not broken down separately.Fulda and Hanau: Goodyear on a cost-cutting pathThe tire manufacturer with headquarters in the USA announced a year ago that it would close its Fulda factory by the end of the third quarter of 2025. German car manufacturers were still doing well at the time: Volkswagen achieved a net profit of almost 18 billion euros in 2023, BMW sold more cars than ever before. In contrast, sales of car tires in Germany fell after the slump in the Corona crisis has not recovered, according to an industry analysis published in August by the trade union-affiliated Hans Böckler Foundation. In addition to the trend towards all-season tires, local manufacturers are also struggling with cheap competition from China. Brands such as Westlake, Kormoran and Goodride are manufactured there. In addition, the production of tires is energy-intensive. The increase in gas prices in Europe after the Russian attack on Ukraine is likely to have “unsettled” companies, according to the analysis. According to the company, around 1,050 of the 5,000 jobs nationwide will be lost at Goodyear in Germany as a result of the closure of the Fulda plant. In Hesse, only the factory in Hanau remains, where the headquarters of Goodyear’s German company is also located. According to the site website, around 1,000 people work “in production” in Hanau. The company did not want to say how many employees there are in total.Kassel: axles for Mercedes trucksThe Mercedes-Benz plant in Kassel with around 2,700 employees is more central Daimler Truck AG production site for commercial vehicle axles. It goes back to Henschel-Werke, a mechanical and vehicle manufacturer that merged with the Hanover truck manufacturer Hanomag to form Hanomag-Henschel Fahrzeugwerke GmbH at the end of the 1960s and was then taken over by Daimler. More on the topic Since 2021, axles for conventional ones have been manufactured here Trucks also produce trucks with battery drives, where the electric drive system is mounted directly on the axle bridge. In Kassel, two electric motors and various transmission parts that come from a factory in Gaggenau, Baden-Württemberg, are first assembled and then attached to the axle bridge. Also in the production of fuel cell trucks, of which Daimler Truck will initially produce a small series by the end of 2026 If the company wants to produce 100 pieces, the Kassel factory will be involved. The project is funded by the Federal Ministry of Transport – as is the sales of the battery-powered trucks that are already being mass-produced. The first customers who ordered the eActros 600 this year – the name of the latest battery-powered truck from Mercedes-Benz Trucks – received a government purchase bonus: They benefited from a funding program from the Ministry of Transport for commercial vehicles with alternative drives, as Daimler Truck announced at the beginning of the month. According to ADAC, electric trucks cost more than twice as much as trucks with diesel engines. In addition, there are currently too few charging stations for electric trucks.Rüsselsheim: Less to do at OpelAt the beginning of December, Opel sent its production employees home for a week. The plant is currently running in single-shift operation, after the previous two shifts were shortened in November. As justification, the company referred to “processed order peaks and current market requirements”, and “the efficiency of production has been significantly increased”. The reference to market requirements nevertheless indicates that demand for the vehicles manufactured in Rüsselsheim is also weakening. The Astra and the DS 4, a model from the French brand DS Automobiles, which, like Opel, belongs to the Stellantis Group, are built in the traditional Opel factory. While the DS 4 is more of a niche product, the Astra has recently sold well, at least in Germany: According to the Federal Motor Vehicle Authority, almost 45,000 new Astras were registered from January to November, a good twice as many as in the same period last year. Across Europe, however, sales of Opel vehicles fell by eight percent in the first ten months of this year, as registration statistics from the European manufacturers’ association ACEA show. Other Stellantis brands are also struggling with declining sales, which is increasing competition among the development centers in the multinational group . A severance pay program running in Rüsselsheim is primarily aimed at engineers employed in development. The company does not disclose how many of the 8,300 Opel and Stellantis employees in Rüsselsheim at the end of 2023 accepted severance pay this year. According to IG Metall, the total workforce has now shrunk to fewer than 8,000 employees.
Go to Source