Due to capacity shortfalls, Volkswagen is letting production rest at the parent plant in Wolfsburg for one to two days a week thanks to new exhaust gas measuring cycles. This emerges from an intranet message, which is available to the SPIEGEL. The measure will be introduced immediately after the plant holidays at the end of July and is scheduled for the end of September. “Switching to the new WLTP test cycle is a feat of strength and, as previously announced, will result in temporary production capacity outages from August onwards.”
Other works are affected, it said in the message. For example, a few closing days are scheduled for the third quarter at the Zwickau site. Partly there are also individual layers eliminated. During the conversion, the production in the component plants should be adapted to the requirements of different vehicle plants.
Regardless of the exhaust gas measurement cycle, there will also be closing days at the Emden plant in the third and fourth quarters, VW said. Reason there is a difficult market situation in the middle class segment, of which Volkswagen is particularly affected as a market leader.
Company and works council had agreed that the closing days were not too great hardships for the employees concerned, it said. Volkswagen had already announced in early June that the production lines because of the new test procedure (WLTP) would be temporarily suspended.