There are no easy CEO jobs in the automotive world, merely narrow degrees of extreme difficulty. Right near the top of the difficulty-o-meter is running Volkswagen. Not only is the automaker gigantic, it’s just the right mix of family-, state-, and publicly-owned to be an absolute nightmare to lead. There are also the enormous expectations that come with being the second largest automaker in the world, plus all the regional politics.
The longstanding critique of Volkswagen is that, as an institution, it’s been slow to recognize its own weaknesses. Oliver Blume, the current head of both Volkswagen and Porsche, stepped into the job at approximately the worst time. Can he make the best of it? There are some clues in a recent interview that suggest he might just have the right mindset to pull it off.
If the Morning Dump had existed ten years ago when Mary Barra took over GM’s top job, I’d have probably said something similar about the steep challenges she faced. While the company isn’t in perfect shape, it’s vastly improved in that time, and Barra deserves a lot of credit for it. In lieu of credit, she received nearly $30 million last year. Between the credit and the cash, always take the cash.
The United States is not exactly making friends around the world right now, which risks pushing some close allies further into the hands of China. Also, the current administration has been taking shots at BMW for… making cars in the United States? Weird times.
‘We’re Not Presumptuous And Know Everything’ Says VW CEO
I once took a class on the modern presidency in college, and what’ll always stick with me is something the professor said the first time we met. He asked the room of kids barely old enough to vote if they thought they could be a future POTUS. A few students raised their hands. I did not.
His advice was that they should aim to be good presidents, not great presidents, because the only way to be a great president is to face a terrible crisis. Lincoln, Washington, and FDR all had lives defined by wars and turmoil.
In that sense, Volkswagen’s Oliver Blume is in a good position to be a great CEO. When he took on the top job at VW, he was already CEO of Porsche, which, let’s face it, is the better job. Porsche is a beloved brand with huge upside potential and the ability to squeeze nice margins out of custom work. Volkswagen, in 2022, was a tangle of mixed priorities coming off of a self-inflicted crisis (Dieselgate) and an exogenous one (the pandemic). That’s to say nothing of the challenges of electrification and falling market share in China.
I’ve written this before, but VW in the Piëch era produced some amazing cars at the expense of recognizing its own limitations. The VW approach to everything was to toss engineers at it, assuming the eventual superiority of its decision-making and engineering. In the key areas of electrification and software, this approach failed. Now it’s up to Blume to clean up this mess.
With his not-quite-purchase of Rivian, Blume showed he was willing to concede defeat if it meant creating a better product. Subsidiary Scout’s shift to EREV was another sign that the automaker could be flexible in a way past VW regimes were not (famously, VW dismissed hybrids because they insisted diesel was the way, which ultimately led to them having to cheat emissions tests to make the untrue suddenly true).
Has that philosophy taken hold? Germany’s Manager Magazine (which is German for “Manager Magazine”) has a long interview with Blume in which he talks about the various challenges facing him and the company. It’s a lot of CEO-speak, as expected, but there are a couple of answers that struck me as positive developments this morning.
Specifically, the interviewer harped a lot on the idea that VW was partnering with different firms for seemingly overlapping objectives, including self-driving and electric vehicles:
Anyone who looks at your key decisions of the past two years gets the impression that you’re losing confidence in your own strength. There are numerous alliances with smaller partners, including XPeng in China and the US electric car manufacturer Rivian.
This brings us to the question of what Volkswagen actually needs to do itself. We continue to manage our core competencies entirely internally – 100 percent of the time. We acquire other things if the added value is greater. And for some technologies, we seek out strong partners and develop them jointly. On the one hand, we manufacture battery cells ourselves in order to build up a high level of expertise and leverage economies of scale. At the same time, we work with regional partners to be more flexible. In software, we develop key applications ourselves and have strong partners for architectural elements.
And then the former teacher becomes a student?
We combine our strengths. Since the Eastern and Western worlds differ significantly when it comes to software, we need different approaches. We can’t possibly do everything ourselves. We’re not presumptuous and know everything. We learn from everywhere. That’s also my expectation of our teams.
Even with the Google translation, I think that’s quite clear. “We can’t possibly do everything ourselves. We’re not presumptuous and know everything. We learn from everywhere” doesn’t seem like an acceptable answer to any question in the Piëch era, even if it might have been the one the company has long needed.
I am often critical of CEOs here, so I feel like it’s important to point out when one of them seems to have the right idea.
Mary Barra Got $29.5 Million In Compensation Last Year
General Motors is an extremely solid company these days, and CEO Mary Barra is being rewarded for it, according to this Automotive News report:
Mary Barra received compensation worth $29.5 million last year as CEO of General Motors, a 5.9 percent increase as the automaker achieved strong earnings and executed on key business goals.
Barra’s base salary of $2.1 million was unchanged from 2022 and 2023, according to an April 11 filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Her stock awards rose 33 percent to $19.5 million, but options dropped to zero from $4.9 million in each of the past two years. Nonequity incentive plan compensation increased 27 percent to $6.7 million.
GM’s performance in 2024 was “a clear reflection of the successful efforts of our extraordinary executive leadership team, led by Ms. Barra, to drive our strategic transformation forward and invest in the business to grow value for shareholders,” Wesley Bush, chair of GM’s compensation committee, said in the filing.
Considering Carlos Tavares got $23.9 million last year, that almost seems like a deal.
How Many Times Can America Lose The Vietnam War?
If you think about it, America has been on an impressive streak of turning enemy combatants into beneficial trading partners. Germany, Japan, South Korea, and Vietnam were all hostile nations at one point. Vietnam, in particular, has become an important balance to Chinese trade (or at least, direct Chinese trade).
Welp, so much for that. From Nikkei Asia:
Chinese President Xi Jinping arrived in communist comrade Vietnam on Monday and called for defending a multilateral trade system that is being rocked by U.S. President Donald Trump.
“Trade wars and tariff wars have no winners, and protectionism has no way out,” Xi wrote in an article posted on the Nhan Dan, the official newspaper of the Vietnamese Communist Party, ahead of his visit. “We must firmly defend the multilateral trading system, firmly maintain the stability of global production and supply chains, and firmly maintain an open and cooperative international environment.”
Xi was greeted at the airport by Vietnamese President Luong Cuong, who was appointed in October. It is rare for a president to receive a foreign VIP at the airport. These high-level airport receptions are usually hosted by government ministers or senior party members, as was the case with Trump’s visits in 2017 and 2019.
As Nikkei Asia reports, this is the second trip to Vietnam in under 18 months.
Why Is The President’s Trade Advisor Attacking BMW?
BMW has been in South Carolina for over 30 years and has proven to be one of the best corporate citizens in our state.
Their presence is a major benefit to the South Carolina economy and it is much appreciated.
— Lindsey Graham (@LindseyGrahamSC) April 8, 2025
What? Why?
Ok, a little backstory here, which is that President Trump’s main trade advisor, Peter Navarro, has been taking shots at automakers for no obvious reason. Early last week, he called Tesla merely “an assembler” of cars. I missed this, because I was focused on the Musk thing, but in that same interview he also took a swing at BMW on CNBC saying:
“And the thing like, you take automobiles, what we’re doing now is a scam like BMW comes to Spartanburg, South Carolina, and all we do is assemble German transmissions and autos… It’s like they get all the good jobs. They get all the good profits.”
The whole interview is kinda unhinged, claiming that auto plants are going to get built in months and not years. In addition to a response from South Carolina’s senator, there’s also the response from BMW:
Plant Spartanburg is an eight million-square-foot facility with three body shops, two paint shops, two assembly halls, and a metal stamping facility for body panels. More than $14.8 billion has been invested since 1992, and 11,000 highly skilled associates assemble 1,500 BMW Sports Activity Vehicles daily—400,000 a year—with parts from hundreds of suppliers across the United States. Our BMW X models are among the most complex vehicles in the world, and they are highly desired by customers everywhere.
The plant in Spartanburg has been an important location in our global BMW Group production network for over 30 years. It is also our largest plant worldwide, serving domestic and international markets with the highly acclaimed BMW X models. In 2024, the plant exported approximately 225,000 BMWs, with an export value exceeding $ 10 billion, making it the largest automotive exporter by value in the United States. Since 2014, the plant in South Carolina has exported over 2.7 million BMW vehicles, representing approximately two-thirds of its total production, with an export value of $ 104 billion.
We export more vehicles from the United States than we import into the country. Plant Spartanburg generates a total economic impact of $26.7 billion for our state, supporting nearly 43,000 jobs and $3.1 billion in wages and salaries.
What a weird time.
What I’m Listening To While Writing TMD
Hey, alright, it’s Clairo, the pride of Middlesex County with “Sexy to Someone” off her latest album. This video has a Yeti, which is cool, though it would be better if it were a Škoda Yeti.
The Big Question
How you feeling about Volkswagen right now?
The German magazine is called “Manager Magazin” (no trailing “e”).
vw needs to copy what stellantis did with the electric charger. the van is definitely a more desirable product I think, but not starting in the fucking 60k range desirable. Also, they make small, cheap evs and hybrids. Why can I get the us specific fatlas and tiguan but not an electric golf. Why.
Sad thing is VW could have kept diesels conforming with emissions if it had just accepted that the cars needed the urea system and would be a few hundred dollars more.
“BMW X models are among the most complex vehicles in the world”
And this is why I have given up on BMW.
The true gem is that BMW still uses the Sports Activity Vehicle moniker in their corporate communications.
How do I feel about VW right now? The German language is great for really specific expressive terms. Do they have a term for “appreciating that something exists but would never consider buying one?”
I’ve always thought VW’s problem in the USA is that its perception of itself is far different than how consumers see it. The Beetle, Bus, and Karmann Ghia established a friendly, dependable brand. Cheap and cheerful. That feeling toward VW was deep. However, VW, especially from the ’80s on, seemed to see itself as some kind of elite engineering concern, making vehicles only for those smart enough to appreciate what they were doing. And what they were doing was making angry looking complicated cars that were less reliable than the Japanese, yet more expensive.
They also have problems with parts, which tend to follow the Porsche/Audi pricing scheme, and dealer service, which tend to be rated below their peers.
$29.5 million . Damn…….
If she gets paid every two weeks that’s $1.13 million every check. (Blinks eyes)
= $10,000/hour for an eight-hour day, 365 days per year? (Wipes away tears)
Most of that is stock. Her cash comp is “only” $2.1M.
I feel like VW was at it’s best when it’s main products were “the people’s…cars” The Beetle, the Rabbit, the Golf. I know it’s where the monies are but they went off the rails with the Toureg and Tiguan and easily pronounceable Atlas, and now they sell a 60k Buzz for nostalgia that has less range than my 8 year old Bolt.(granted the concept predates the Bolt by about 20 years)
They should let Audi sell the pricey stuff, and stick to the cheap things, but many split brands have strayed from this, used to be the Corvette was the only Chevy over $50k, now that’s most of their lineup, including all the trucks!
Also there’s the history thing with where VW started, but is the good will generated by the Beetle enough to overcome that? If any other company had the success of the Beetle it’d be a no brainer, total win on positive feelings, for like ever. In my mind, with how VW started, it’s still not enough to not bug me(pun intended).
So I dunno about VW, and maybe they don’t either, and that’s the problem.
I love companies having to put out statements to combat flippant but blatantly false statements by members of the administration. Seems mostly like a Trump thing but what do I know.
Their statement needed another sentence at the end: “Would you prefer we leave?”
“famously, VW dismissed hybrids because they insisted diesel was the way, which ultimately led to them having to cheat emissions tests”
Which is even more confusing now that they have bunch of hybrid options but *don’t sell any of them in the US*. VWs have never had great mileage, so it’s weird they wouldn’t chase the pullback from EVs to hybrids by just bringing over their existing drivetrains and stuffing it in the Tiguan, for example, and just print money.
Hmm, here in Europe they are class leading in pretty much every gategory in fuel mileage. It’s that and looks pretty much only reason to get them. And due our fuel prices the reliability isn’t that critical vs fuel economy for most people that drive a lot. With 2€/l fuel extra 500€ service every now and then isn’t really that big deal if the car is frugal and niceish to drive.
Wow, really? I always thought there were more fuel efficient cars in Europe.
Well yes, also from VW :D. Like the GTE hybrids they’ve had for ~11years now for Golf, passat and I guess some cross overs. That said they aren’t really that reliable, but great leases.
Personally I don’t care much for VW, but not many other manufacturers offer rather frugal AWD options, so I think I have to go with used passat or skoda suberb wagon for road trips (or Multivan) and get smaller EV for the daily grind on next round. Larger EV hasn’t really suited our lifestyle here in the Nordics that well.
To be fair, Europe also gets MANY more small displacement, eco-friendly engine options, while most of our VWs only get one engine choice per model, and for most cars, it’s the 2L EA-888.
While I’m sure VWOA is trying to find a balance of reliability/power/economy, among ICE cars, VW’s economy is average at best.
Is it still a great president if the crisis is caused by his own ignorant move? /s
Depends on the delusions of the members of their cult.
I feel like VW should have Ford Build the Amarock at the Ranger factory and sell it. No import tariff!
How you feeling about Volkswagen right now?
Indifferent, like always.
I’ve had 3 VWs in the last decade. A 2014 Tiguan, a 2016 Jetta, and now a 2024 ID4. They’ve all been good cars to me. The Tiguan and Jetta were leases but during the time I had them they were never in the shop for anything other than dealer paid for oil changes. The ID4 is also a lease and has been been fine so far. The infotainment is wretched though. VW basically admitted it was a disaster and said they were going back to regular controls according to an article I read here anyway. I’ve gotten used to the touch controls but still don’t like them.
I have high hopes for the Scouts. I’d like to replace my WL Grand Cherokee with one when they become available.
It is a weird time, Very Weird.
This always bothers me, but when the news brings up *Other Parts of The World*, they make broad generalizations that are often not close to reality. China, as actually lost a war in Vietnam more recently then US has. Even though both these countries are **Communist**, though there current capitalist predicament wouldn’t be what Marx had in mind. China and Vietnam, really, and I mean really don’t like each other. Various Chinese empires and governments have all marched troops across Mekong in effort to bring them into the fold. After about the 20th time your neighbor sends a battalion to your backyard. Let’s say you start developing trust issues. And Ho Chi Minh and Mao were like Stalin and Tito of Asia. Really became The Other Cold War in the Cold War playing field between the Rus and Sino and there respective doctrines. And after Vietnam had a successful Holiday in Cambodia, things almost got spicy level 10 there.
Like, just saying there apart of the Evil Cabel of Communist Super Friends, ignores this is **not good for America**. China has been on a bit of apology tour. And forming trade agreements with South Korea, Japan, Vietnam and we’ll see if they can pull in any of Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia. With EU on one end, and team building China on the other, the American Export market could be closed quickly and efficiently. Which, is probably pretty bad Pete!
> After about the 20th time your neighbor sends a battalion to your backyard. Let’s say you start developing trust issues.
I loled.
I just saw my first ID Buzz in the wild a few days ago and while I like it, it does seem like VW tends to go all retro whenever the chips are down. They spend a lot of effort evoking the memory of classic VWs without seeming to get what made those cars iconic in the first place.
GIVE US A NEW NEW BEETLE YOU COWARDS
Also, I need reasonably priced VW parts, so attempt to gargle my too-large-for-your-mouth balls, Navarro — I’m on the Germans’ side on this one.
Wasn’t the refresh the New New Beetle? We need a New New New Beetle!
I dunno — the original had its refreshes, but was still the Beetle.
Either way, my point still stands: BRING BACK BEETLES!!!
The rear-mounted electric motor version could be the eEetle…
Whoa whoa whoa, let’s not dabble into Voltswagen-style nomenclature here. A Beetle is a Beetle is a Beetle, even in retro-kitsch New Beetle forms.
Whoops, misread the instructions and started dabbling in necromancy. I’ll return Lennon to his peaceful slumber.
Wow, Stef.
Not a General Motors fan, but congrats to Mary Barra. She’s done a solid job of keeping new, decent, products out and not getting pulled into the swamp.
When I drive my 1969 VW Camper in Chicago traffic, I always think about how different the vibe of VW was in the era of beetles and busses. Then an impatient Atlas Sport will honk at me because I’m driving too slow for them with my 60 horses, and I wonder if the driver even knows this antique car with the manual transmission is the same brand as theirs.
When I think of VW today, I am left kind of sad. I had Scirocco and Corrado posters on my walls as a teen, and they’re not doing anything like that anymore.
Navarro is a crazy and stupid person. He’s another of this tranche of white men who desperately wants the world to go back to a time that simply does not and will not exist again. Ever notice how literally everything gets simplified by them? Nuance totally escape them.
Let’s think about what this administration and Petey say about jobs and BMW. On the one hand, they want to return manufacturing to the USA. Steel mill and oil drilling kinds of jobs. Real blue collar stuff. Now Petey says those jobs aren’t good enough. He wants those highly skilled jobs like designing and building transmissions too. What becomes obvious upon questioning is that they want the USA to be superior at everything. I suspect they have some idealized vision of the ’50s and ’60s mixed with aristocratic desires. Happy Days for Robber Barons if you will. What they willfully ignore was the post WWII era was built upon high taxes and socialized education which produced a healthy blue and white collar middle class along with elite scientific and engineering proficiencies. Then we ceded much of our lesser manufacturing/production advantages to other parts of the world without investing in alternative skills to replace them and let Reagan convince everyone that welfare queens were stealing from those hard working rural white folk. Then the same party of idiots conned the electorate into believing that if you just stopped taxing rich people so much that they would make everything better creating jobs. That didn’t happen and so we’re in the mess we are today. The only way out is to return to the hybrid socialized capitalism we had during one of our better eras. If Petey and orange man want the types of jobs designing and manufacturing fancy transmissions, they need to tax the shit out of the rich and invest in public education. That’s how it happened before and the only way it will again.
And don’t get me started on the idea that the USA has to be the best at every single thing. That’s just stupid and ignores reality.
Time to call my mom, or else I’d keep going.
That’s the type of thinking that led to Brexit. Having one-way trade relations everywhere only works if you have tons of colonies.
Exactly. In the ’50s, the marginal US tax rate was over 90% and the GI Bill was educating people. Then the CEOs discovered they could get better bonuses by using workers in other countries.
These cons aren’t envisioning a return to the 1950’s – it’s the Gilded Age they want to bring back. The 1890’s through the 1920’s. It was a time when a scant few amassed mind-boggling wealth while the rest of society just worked to put more money in the industrialists’ pockets. This is what they have planned for you: back-breaking work for low pay with few safeguards. Why do you think the first steps were to kneecap OSHA, NIOSH, and unions?
You forgot ‘convicted felon’, which is another one of his attributes that seems important enough to mention.
I wanted to be driving a VW ID Buzz instead of a Model Y. But between the delays and the price once it finally arrived, they lost me. There’s no other new VW vehicle out there that remotely interests me. The Piech era stuff is crazy, but with the repair bills to match.
VW. I have many mixed feelings about VW. VW the brand of cars in America? Like many others have posted, they make nothing interesting or really even average in class, while being carrying around all that history of unreliability. I oddly hope they turn it around though, as a former owner of a 97 Jetta with plaid seats and a 2.slow manual, they made fun cars before.
Now VW as a car company that owns everything I feel a bit different. Porsche gonna Porsche, as in, be amazing at most anything it does. Audi is somehow trying to ruin itself as it struggles to find its place in this new auto landscape. I always appreciated Audi as the understated and quirky of the big German lux sporty brands, but now, they are just dull. Scout has a real chance in the US if VW keeps strong nerves and keeps feeding it the billions it will need to survive. I would be interested in a Scout EREV at some point in the future.
I will gloss over the other VW owned brands, and just say that my final mixed feelings about VW are still about its origin and connections to Nazis. Very uncool, and I struggle to forget about it, but I apparently am okay with it enough to have still bought a VW at some point (and have owned Mitsubishis which made the Zero plane for WW2, and have owned Fords which had the terrible Henry Ford as a founder, etc).
The US is getting lectured *against* protectionism by *China*, and they’re exactly right. Thanks Trump!