Volkswagen
Group
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
From March to June 2021, on Wednesday afternoon, this course organizes presentations
or excursions with various representatives of European Companies established in
Korea. The purpose is to gather various expatriates to discover the potential
of European companies and institutions, their presence here in Korea, and the
good and bad of being a European in Korea. 
