Volkswagen May Kill Half Its Lineup And Slash 100,000 Jobs Just To Stay Afloat

Good morning! It's Friday, June 10, 2026, and this is The Morning Shift, your daily roundup of the top automotive headlines from around the world, in one place. This is where you'll find the most important stories that are shaping the way Americans drive and get around.

In this morning's edition, Volkswagen is staring down the business end of a double-barrel shotgun with one side being lineup cuts and the other being layoffs as it struggles to tackle a historic crisis, U.S. safety regulators are considering allowing driverless cars without steering wheels on our roads, BMW is running away with the luxury sales crown and Tata has high hopes for Jaguar-Land Rover despite everything.

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If you think you're having a hard time right now, I promise it isn't nearly as rough as what Volkswagen is going through. The company may be forced to cut its model lineup in half, slash production capacity and lay off about 100,000 workers if it wants to stay afloat as it attempts to wade through the muck of a historic crisis. The German automaker is under serious pressure to restructure the business model that has underpinned its success for decades, because rising costs, excess capacity in Germany, rising competition out of China, new regulations and U.S. tariffs have ravaged its business. Profit margins have been sliced in half between 2021 and 2025. Wowza

Following a supervisory board meeting earlier this week, the company said its lineup would be gradually cut by up to 50% as it concentrates on the most important market segments. This would make some real sense. VW sells a lot of overlapping products — especially in Europe. Production capacity would also be reduced by 10% from 10 million vehicles per year to 9 million. From Reuters:

Sources have said [CEO Olvier] Blume is considering closing four German plants — Hanover, Emden, Zwickau and Audi's Neckarsulm site — and cutting up to 100,000 jobs, ⁠roughly double the number currently planned, in what would be Volkswagen's biggest restructuring yet.

Volkswagen did not provide specifics on what sources have said about potential job cuts and factory closures, which drew massive ​worker protests across company sites on Thursday.

[...]

At the board meeting at Volkswagen's headquarters in Wolfsburg on Thursday, Blume faced the committee's powerful labour representatives, who oppose deeper cuts across the group, which includes the Audi and Porsche brands.

He is also under pressure from the Porsche and Piech owner families, whose core investments ​have lost tens of billions of euros in market value in recent years. Volkswagen shares have lost more than half their value in the last three years.

In Wolfsburg, workers blew whistles, waved ​red union flags and marched behind a banner reading "gemeinsam stark" — "strong together" — as a klaxon sounded in the background.

The IG Metall union said around 400 people were demonstrating in Wolfsburg, with union representative Thorsten Groeger warning ‌the company risked ⁠a "major conflict" with workers.

[...]

Under Blume's last restructuring deal, unions secured a commitment from management ​to avoid German plant closures, prompting Volkswagen to seek alternative uses for underutilised sites.

Those efforts include a long-running search for a defence-sector partner ​for the Osnabrueck factory and ⁠the possibility of producing models designed for the Chinese market in Germany.

Even after VW's lineup is cut, the slashing won't be finished. Apparently, the number of available options for surviving models will be reduced by up to 75%, according to Motor1. It would seem that the days of Volkswagen Group's customization practices (especially at a company like Porsche) might be behind it.

The company has already started slashing. The Touareg and Touran are already dead. The T-Roc Convertible isn't long for this world, either — slated to join them in 2027. Audi has also sunsetted the A1 and Q2, as well as the TT, R8 and Q8 E-Tron. Things are getting, uh, spooky at Volkswagen.

I've always said cars have too many steering wheels. We should get rid of them. Apparently, U.S. auto safety regulators agree with me, because Jonathan Morrison, administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, said that the agency would "absolutely" consider ending requirements that driverless cars include steering wheels. This could end up being a big win for companies like Tesla and Zoox. From Bloomberg:

"If you're developing a vehicle that is designed never to be driven by a human operator, it doesn't make any sense to require manual controls," [Morrison said.]

The comments follow NHTSA's move last month to update federal safety standards to remove the mandate for manual brake pedals in autonomous vehicles. The changes, part of an ongoing effort by the Trump administration to modernize rules for driverless cars, could ease the path for purpose-built autonomous vehicles including Tesla's Cybercab, a two-seat electric car that lacks a steering wheel or foot pedals.

Tesla Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk has advocated for policy changes that would support broad commercial deployment of self-driving vehicles, including calling for a federal framework for driverless cars. The automaker, which is working to stand up a robotaxi business, has started producing Cybercabs in recent months but has yet to deploy them broadly.

The robotaxi market includes a number of big-name players, including Amazon.com Inc.'s Zoox and Alphabet Inc.'s Waymo, the leading operator of paid robotaxi rides in the US.

So far, Morrison hasn't specified any sort of timing or other details for potentially reevaluating the need for a steering wheel in autonomous vehicles. The brake pedal change would only apply to vehicles designed to operate exclusively without a human driver, and it leaves existing rules unchanged for all other types of cars.

I suppose it makes sense. There's really no need for a driverless car to have a steering wheel, and the few times I've taken a Waymo, it did always seem a bit goofy to see a wheel and seat that you couldn't use. Before you get into it, no, I'm not interested in a conversation about the ethics of autonomous vehicles.

BMW has been the luxury sales king in the U.S. for six years at this point, and it just extended that lead after a second quarter as its closest rivals stumbled. Deliveries rose 13% to 102,713 vehicles during the period thanks to the X3, X5 and — get this — 3 Series. All in all, the German automaker sold 186,944 vehicles in the first half of 2026 — up 4.7%.

Off in a very, very distant second place was Lexus with 88,760 sales — down 7.5%. Its first half total hit 169,712 units, a 5.2% decline. A lot of that can be attributed to the ES sedan's redesign and new model ramp-up, but a loss is a loss no matter how you slice it. Following the first quarter, BMW's lead over Lexus was fewer than 3,300 vehicles, but it's now over 17,000. Mercedes-Benz was also nowhere near its cross-country rivals, coming in third place with an estimated 75,000 quarterly sales. It also sold an estimated 145,000 passenger vehicles in the first half — down 3.5%. From Automotive News:

Volvo's second-quarter U.S. sales rose 9 percent to 34,228, snapping a streak of three quarterly declines. The Swedish automaker saw double-digit growth in mild hybrid sales, but electric vehicle volumes declined by 45 percent.

"The overall market still remains impacted by low customer sentiment, increased competition in the SUV segment and a slower than expected recovery in sales of electric and plug-in hybrid cars post subsidy removal," Volvo said in a statement.

Genesis sales rose 4.6 percent to 20,771.

That number should be higher, dammit.

It was a weaker second quarter for other luxury brands.

Sales fell 0.7 percent to 37,362 at Acura, 19 percent to 35,825 at Cadillac; 16 percent to 26,389 at Lincoln and 0.2 percent to 12,298 at Infiniti.

Porsche's U.S. sales fell 17 percent in the second quarter to 16,495. The only model to post a gain was the venerable 911 sports car, with sales up 39 percent to 4,652.

The German brand said overall volume was negatively impacted by portfolio changes, namely the end of 718 output and lower EV deliveries.

Porsche's first-half U.S. sales dropped 15 percent to 33,012.

Second-quarter volume fell by an estimated 28 percent to 24,400 at JLR.

Audi reports second-quarter sales later in July.

Shockingly, BMW has seen really strong demand for the 3 Series despite the fact it's very near the end of its current lifecycle. A big part of that is because so many 3 Series rivals have simply gone away. Another part is, despite its age, a basic 3 Series is still a great car and a relatively affordable option in the grand scheme of the luxury market.

Tata is holding out so much hope for Jaguar-Land Rover to turn it around. It expects the struggling British automotive unit to contribute somewhere between $45 and $50 billion in revenue by March of 2031, and that's part of a wider $100 billion automotive revenue target for the Indian company. Tata is expected to invest about $41.9 billion and JLR will invest another $26.8 billion to help make it happen over the next five years. The investments will fund new products, electrification, manufacturing capacity and technology. From Bloomberg:

For the passenger vehicle business, the company reiterated it aims to expand its India market share from 14.2% to 20% by March 2031, aided by the launch of six new models and more than 20 product refreshes. Chandrasekaran said the recently revived Sierra has the potential to become one of the company's best-selling models.

Tata Motors PV, the local market leader in electric vehicles with a nearly 45% market share, intends to maintain its dominance by expanding its portfolio across multiple price points.

Tata's closely held battery maker Agratas Ltd. will begin production in calendar 2027, supplying both JLR and Tata Motors, Chandrasekaran said, as the group localizes battery manufacturing.

This growth plan for Tata's four automotive businesses was laid out after the company demerged its passenger and commercial vehicle operations. Along with the $45-$50 billion from JLR, its commercial vehicle business is targeted at about $40 billion. The rest of the balance will come from its cars and auto components business.

History.com

Who knows where we'd be if Volvo decided to keep the three-point seatbelt patent all to itself? Honestly, it's impossible to know how many people would be dead if it didn't open up the patent to the wider automotive industry. There's no argument that doing this hasn't paid off for the company, either. If you ask a car normie what the safest vehicles on the road are, almost undoubtedly, they're going to say "Volvo." If you want to learn more about the invention of the three-point seatbelt, head over to History.com.

Gas prices are a disaster zone, I'm sorry to say. Since the U.S. and Iran announced the peace talks have collapsed three days ago, gas prices have risen nine cents, and I don't think it's going to slow down anytime soon, as tanker traffic in the Strait of Hormuz has plunged, according to Al Jazeera. WTI Crude Oil futures and Brent Crude prices aren't looking too hot, either. They were sitting at $72 and $76, respectively, at the time of publication.

Here's where national average prices stand right now, according to AAA:

History.com

What this all means is that the average price of a gallon of regular gas went up another 4 cents overnight to $3.88. Still, we're a good ways away from the 2026 peak we saw back on May 21, when prices hit $4.56 per gallon.

Since we're right around the 25th anniversary of "Wet Hot American Summer," I decided to fire it up last night for the 10,000th time, and, oh my God, it's still the funniest thing ever committed to video. The entire Ken Marino "Danny's Song" van sequence is a personal favorite of mine. The pure absurdity of it all just tickles me. It's a shame Victor never got laid. He really deserved to. I mean, he's got the voice of an angel.