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Audi to keep hiring workers despite VW diesel scandal

Even while Volkswagen contemplates delaying or canceling projects to pay for costs related to the massive diesel emissions scandal, its stablemate Audi is hiring, according to Reuters. Audi certainly isn't immune to the diesel scandal, with around 2.1 million affected vehicles worldwide including 13,000-14,000 in the US, but the scandal so far isn't affecting staffing levels. "We are sticking with plans for strategic growth and are continuing to hire new employees as planned," Audi board member for human resources Thomas Sigi said in a German newspaper, according to Reuters. Sigi even suggested paying a "respectable" bonus to workers next year. Audi has some big projects on the horizon, too. Among them, the company intends to launch a production version of the E-Tron Quattro Concept in 2018, and for performance fans a new TT RS appears to be on the way. The new A4 should be a big contributor to global volume when its worldwide rollout is complete. Rather than allowing the diesel scandal to hurt all of its divisions, the VW Group instead wants to concentrate the fallout (and costs) on the VW brand, according to Reuters. Those expenses could be huge. Volkswagen is budgeting around $7.3 billion just to repair the 11 million emissions-cheating vehicles. Worldwide, maximum estimates put the whole mess at $87 billion. Related Video:

The UK votes for Brexit and it will impact automakers

It's the first morning after the United Kingdom voted for what's become known as Brexit – that is, to leave the European Union and its tariff-free internal market. Now begins a two-year process in which the UK will have to negotiate with the rest of the EU trading bloc, which is its largest export market, about many things. One of them may be tariffs, and that could severely impact any automaker that builds cars in the UK. This doesn't just mean companies that you think of as British, like Mini and Jaguar. Both of those automakers are owned by foreign companies, incidentally. Mini and Rolls-Royce are owned by BMW, Jaguar and Land Rover by Tata Motors of India, and Bentley by the VW Group. Many other automakers produce cars in the UK for sale within that country and also export to the EU. Tariffs could damage the profits of each of these companies, and perhaps cause them to shift manufacturing out of the UK, significantly damaging the country's resurgent manufacturing industry. Autonews Europe dug up some interesting numbers on that last point. Nissan, the country's second-largest auto producer, builds 475k or so cars in the UK but the vast majority are sent abroad. Toyota built 190k cars last year in Britain, of which 75 percent went to the EU and just 10 percent were sold in the country. Investors are skittish at the news. The value of the pound sterling has plummeted by 8 percent as of this writing, at one point yesterday reaching levels not seen since 1985. Shares at Tata Motors, which counts Jaguar and Land Rover as bright jewels in its portfolio, were off by nearly 12 percent according to Autonews Europe. So what happens next? No one's terribly sure, although the feeling seems to be that the jilted EU will impost tariffs of up to 10 percent on UK exports. It's likely that the UK will reciprocate, and thus it'll be more expensive to buy a European-made car in the UK. Both situations will likely negatively affect the country, as both production of new cars and sales to UK consumers will both fall. Evercore Automotive Research figures the combined damage will be roughly $9b in lost profits to automakers, and an as-of-yet unquantified impact on auto production jobs. Perhaps the EU's leaders in Brussels will be in a better mood in two years, and the process won't devolve into a trade war. In the immediate wake of the Brexit vote, though, the mood is grim, the EU leadership is angry, and investors are spooked.

VW rearranges leadership as brand focuses on electrification

The Volkswagen overhaul continues into next year with a raft of new executive appointments that CEO Mattias Muller says will enable "Faster decision-making and more efficient action." One of the headline moves is Porsche head of design Michael Mauer taking over VW Group design, succeeding Walter de Silva who retired in early November after running the Group's styling bureau since 2007. Among the sheetmetal on Mauer's resume are the Mercedes SLK and SL from the late nineties, the 2007 Porsche Cayenne, the Panamera, and, most recently, the 918 Spyder. He will retain his current role at Porsche in addition to the new responsibilities. Here's hoping some of the excitement seen in the 918 filters its way down to VW's recently mundane offerings. Dr. Ulrich Eichhorn was head of Group R&D from 2000 to 2003, then went to Bentley, then left the company for the German Association of the Automotive Industry in 2012. He has been lured back to his old role in charge of Group R&D, taking over the shoes recently worn by Dr. Ulrich Hackenberg, who resigned in early December while still suspended over his involvement in the diesel emissions fiasco. Ralf-Gerhard Willner takes over Group Product and Modular Toolkit Strategy, after leading development vehicle concept divisions at Audi and VW, and being technical director at Italdesign Giugiaro. He will play a huge role as VW evolves and expands its current platform strategy to include purpose-built electric cars and flat batteries. All those bottoms will be in chairs in Q1 of next year. The number of department heads that report directly to Muller has also been cut, giving Muller more time to focus on "overarching issues of the future." VW says that primary among them will be technology issues from EVs to digital integration. Back in October the company hired Thomas Sedran away from Opel as a lead strategist, his job being to figure out how each of those technical departments and the Group's brands navigate the marketplace and those "issues" from now until 2025. The press release below has more. Related Video: Volkswagen Group continues structural and staff realignment- Functions in CEO's area of responsibility reorganized- Muller: "Faster decision-making and more efficient action"Wolfsburg, 17 December 2015 - The Volkswagen Group is becoming more streamlined and speeding up its internal decision-making process. To that end, functions in the area of responsibility headed by CEO Matthias Muller are being restructured.