For the Volkswagen Group, what was once a pearl of earnings has now become a huge burden. The biggest burden for the Swabians was a strategic turnaround that ex-Porsche boss Oliver Blume initiated a good year ago. At that time, it became clear that the management’s ambitious electric car goals could not be achieved. Blume pulled the emergency brake – and justified this by saying that e-mobility has developed significantly more slowly in many markets than “we and many experts had expected years ago.” In 2025, a good 22 percent of the Porsche models sold were purely electric vehicles.

In view of the “market realities and customer needs”, the aim is now to see a combustion engine comeback well into the next decade. There is also little left of management’s once-big battery plans. In the fall, CFO Breckner expected special costs of up to 3.1 billion euros for the entire financial year for the pivot. The tariffs in the USA also cost around 0.7 billion euros.