Volkswagen Rumored To Close Four German Plants, 140,000 Jobs At Risk

Volkswagen's Emden plant switched entirely to the ID.4 in 2022, then added the ID.7 sedan, betting its future on electric assembly lines. Now that bet is the reason the plant may go dark first.

Leaked supervisory board documents, first reported by WirtschaftsWoche, lay out a schedule to end production at Emden and Zwickau in 2031, Hanover in 2032, and Audi's Neckarsulm plant in 2034. CEO Oliver Blume takes the plan into a supervisory board meeting on September 4, with roughly 140,000 jobs reportedly tied to the broader restructuring.

What Emden, Zwickau, Hanover And Neckarsulm Build Today

Emden currently builds the Volkswagen ID.4 and ID.7, both MEB-based electric models aimed at European, North American (excluding ID.7), and China buyers. Zwickau, with around 8,000 workers, runs an even broader EV slate: the ID.3, ID.4 and ID.5, plus the Audi Q4 E-Tron and Cupra Born, and it also bodies the Bentley Bentayga and Lamborghini Urus.

Hanover is VW's commercial-vehicle EV hub, building the ID.Buzz passenger and cargo van since 2022 after a modernization that added new body and paint shops. Audi's Neckarsulm site, one of the largest employers in the Heilbronn-Franken region, produces the A5, A6 and A8 alongside the electric E-Tron GT at its Böllinger Höfe facility.

That is four plants covering nearly every EV nameplate Volkswagen Group sells in Europe today, plus Audi's flagship sedan and its only halo EV. Losing all four inside a single decade would gut the group's current electric manufacturing base, not some legacy combustion footprint due for retirement.

As Reuters reported, Blume has already said publicly that VW cannot guarantee competitive capacity utilization at these four sites through the 2030s, though he has stressed no closures are formally decided.

Volkswagen has already trimmed its US EV lineup once amid slower demand, a retreat covered in our report on the ID.4's paused US availability, and the group has floated cutting its model range broadly, as detailed in our coverage of plans to reduce the VW lineup by half. Neither of those moves is confirmed as final, and the plants could stay open if they hit unspecified cost targets by 2027.