German automaker Volkswagen AG and its labor unions have agreed to 30,000 job cuts by 2021 at its VW brand as part of a plan to boost profitability and fund a shift to electric and self-driving cars after its emissions scandal, a source said yesterday.
Europe’s largest automaker is trying to increase savings at its biggest unit in Germany, where its costs are high, while needing to find billions of euros to pay for the cleanup related to its diesel emissions cheating scandal.
The agreement, details of which were to be announced at a news conference yesterday, foresees 3.7 billion euros (US$3.9 billion) in annual savings at VW’s namesake brand, which would involve 23,000 job cuts in Germany alone, another source said.
Photo: EPA
VW Group, which has 610,076 employees worldwide, declined to comment.
The so-called future pact, which the two sides have been hammering out since June, aims to increase the brand’s operating margin from an expected 2 percent this year.
Labor leaders agreed to the cuts in exchange for a management pledge to create new jobs and invest in electric cars, mainly at factories in Germany.
At the same time as cutting traditional jobs, the VW brand is to create 9,000 new jobs through investments in electric car technology, the source said.
VW managers have agreed to build an electric sports utility vehicle at the company’s main plant in Wolfsburg, Germany, the first source said.
German newspaper Handelsblatt reported earlier that up to 30,000 jobs would be cut by 2020.
It also said about 10,000 jobs would be axed outside of Germany, mainly in North and South America.
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to