Volkswagen was founded in 1937 and was first created by Ferdinand Porsche. Currently headquartered in Wolfsburg, Germany, the current CEO is Herbert Diess. Last year, in 2020, they had a total asset of €488 Billion and takes was 252.6 Billion. And now about 304,174 employees work for the Volkswagen Group.
Outstatt is Volkswagen's new headquarters, a factory equipped with state-of-the-art facilities and high-level technology, and is also very famous as Volkswagen's automotive theme park.
The Volkswagen Group is the world's largest automobile group. Light cars, small cars, midsize cars, large cars, high-end sedans, SUVs, sports cars, super cars, hypercars, trucks, racing cars, GT, pickup trucks, electric cars, hydrogen cars, and all kinds of cars that run on wheels on the ground can be made.
Volkswagen is literally the most familiar and most-selling car brand to the German public, but I'll go over the description of Volkswagen in more detail later soon. Skoda is Czech's automobile company. the world's oldest automobile company.
Seat is Spain's only mass-produced car manufacturer/sales company. It is incorporated as a subsidiary of the Volkswagen Group.
Audi is one of the representative German premium cars. Audi: German premium car company. Acquired in 1964. Now Bentley is not this cute little baby called Bentley here, but company Bentley, the British luxury handcrafted car company, is more than a premium.
Porsche, commonly called supercars and Porsche, a symbol of fast cars. It can be said to be the brother company of Volkswagen. It was acquired in 2009. And, Lamborghini is known as the car of various top stars in Korea, and it can be said to be an icon with a great symbolism. It is an Italian super manufacturer and was acquired by Volkswagen in 1998.
Bugatti comes to the most expensive or fastest car in the world. In fact, it can be said that it is a hypercar manufacturer beyond the Bugatti supercar. It was acquired in 1998.
Moving on to the commercial vehicle field, SCANIA is Swedish commercial car manufacturer founded in 1891. Currently, it is one of the affiliates of the Volkswagen Group.
MAN is a German commercial vehicle manufacturer under the Volkswagen Group. They can make largest Low-floor bus, articulated bus, high decker bus, etc. Including various types of buses, Produces heavy duty trucks and tractors, largely industrial engines, and related industrial equipment.
Volkswagen Company
Volkswagen means national car in German. Volk (People's) + Wagen (means car in German) Hitler made it possible for German workers to freely travel around Europe by owning inexpensive German-made cars. To finish his purpose, as soon as he came to power, construction of the Autobahn was initiated as a public civil engineering project, and in 1934, he ordered Dr. Ferdinand Porsche to build a 1,000 Reichsmark national car that workers could save enough money to buy. At the time, however, German private car makers only had lineups centered on luxury vehicles, so there was no company that could meet this price.
Accordingly, this project is undertaken by the German Labor Front to create a separate company with a large amount of public subsidies. This was the start of the Volkswagen and in 1937, Volkswagen was officially founded.
At present, Volkswagen produces vehicles in more than 50 regions in 14 countries and has a presence in more than 150 markets. In 2019, the Volkswagen brand sold 6.28 million units in the global market, the largest sales volume in the history of the brand.
Worldwide, more than 196,000 employees work at Volkswagen, 86,000 employees work at 10,000 dealerships, and Volkswagen continues to grow with the development of the automotive market. E-mobility, smart mobility and digital innovation are key strategies for the future.
Volkswagen in Korea
Volkswagen operates a Korean subsidiary called Volkswagen Korea. Volkswagen Korea was first established on January 1, 2005, and has entered the Korean imported car market in earnest. Now it has 34 showrooms and 35 service centers nationwide. And all cars going to the showroom can only be sold after inspection at the PDI Center in Pyeongtaek.
The Korean imported car market continues to grow. In 2020, it is over 16% and continues to update its all-time high. However, Volkswagen is relatively lagging behind other imported cars. Looking at the latest status of imported cars in April 2021, Mercedes-Benz accounted for 33.6% and BMW accounted for 24.4%, while Volkswagen accounted for only 4.3%.
Only five years ago, Volkswagen's market share was 10.68% and the total share of the Volkswagen Group was ranked first in Korea. This is because the sale of Volkswagen vehicles was banned due to the diesel gate in 2016. After the sale ban is lifted, Volkswagen is working very hard to recover the previous market share.
As part of that, Volkswagen Korea is running various programs in Korea. Among them, they are participating in various educational projects. The think tomoroad contact contest held this June is an idea contest for the 4th to 6th grades of elementary school. This is a competition where a total of 100 teams are given classes on software and coding
In addition, a program called Tomorrow School has been underway since 2019. This event is conducted in conjunction with the Ministry of Education of the South Korea and it is a program for students with disabilities and is conducted for students in special classes at special schools and general schools.
Future of the Volkswagen
Volkswagen held a “Way to ZERO” convention on April 29th. 'Zero' in the name means that they are going to make carbon zero. On this day, Volkswagen announced the details of its decarbonization strategy. They have already cut their carbon emissions by 22% between 2019 and 2020, but they said they plan to cut it by another 40% by 2030.
In an effort to protect the environment and reduce carbon reduction, Volkswagen is working hard to make electric vehicles and they are actively entering the electric vehicle market. Volkswagen is producing a series of electric cars called 'ID', and recently launched the latest model, the high-performance electric car, ID4 GTX.
It was evaluated that Volkswagen entered the electric vehicle market late compared to other manufacturers, but recently, they are actively entering the electric vehicle market.
Beyond making electric vehicles, Volkswagen has declared that they will also manufacture electric vehicle batteries. Volkswagen has said it will significantly increase its electric vehicle battery production at its Braunschweig plant in Germany, and aims to build a battery system of 500,000 units per year.
Volkswagen is also challenging self-driving cars. They have already announced that it plans to produce chips for self-driving cars directly. It will be interesting to see how Volkswagen can differentiate itself and become a market leader.
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The second presentation was made by Professor Menke, introducing the European companies in Songdo and nearby. Unfortunately we could not visit the companies this year because of COVID, but there is always a good opportunity to make contacts there because of job- or internship-opportunities.
weblink for the presentation file:
https://profmenke.files.wordpress.com/2021/05/european-companies-in-songdo.ppt
