Audi’s labor boss has targeted top management for lacking a strategy for production in Germany as workers at the luxury automaker’s essential plants fear they could be left behind in the race for orders and tasks.
Volkswagen‘s primary revenue engine in 2016 designated production of its first mass-produced electric sport-utility vehicle (SUV) to a plant located in Brussels and in April selected lower-cost sites in Slovakia and Hungary to develop 2 more SUVs.
With Audi parent Volkswagen both pressing a post-Dieselgate shift to electric vehicles, Audi’s labor bosses have consistently contacted executives to allocate production of a battery-powered model to the main factory in Ingolstadt using 43,000 people and home to R&D centers.
“A production strategy is presently not noticeable,” works council chairman Peter Mosch informed a gathering of 8,000 workers in Ingolstadt on Wednesday.
“Now is the time when purposeful decisions for the future of Audi need to be taken but, until now, they have been failing to materialize,” stated Mosch.
The criticism by Audi’s powerful unions, inhabiting half the seats on the automaker’s supervisory board that decides on plant closures and executive posts, reveals the company has more to do as it faces the fallout of its emissions scandal and an expensive business transformation.
Audi prepares to include electrified models – purely-battery powered cars and hybrid cars – to its entire model lines, taking advantage of production at both Ingolstadt and Neckarsulm, procurement chief Bernd Martens informed the staff gathering.