The last vehicle will roll off the assembly line at Volkswagen’s plant in Dresden, Germany, on Tuesday, marking the first time in the automaker’s 88-year history that it has closed a plant in its home country.
Volkswagen warned of potential production cuts last year, as it faced shaky demand in Europe and China, its biggest market, as well as higher tariffs that have crimped sales in the United States.
After 24 years of vehicle production, the Dresden plant will be converted into a research hub focused on technologies like artificial intelligence, robotics and chip design. Volkswagen will team up with the government of the state of Saxony and the Dresden University of Technology on the project at the plant, known as the Transparent Factory because of its glass walls.
“We did not take the decision to end vehicle production at the Transparent Factory after more than 20 years lightly,” Thomas Schäfer, chief executive of the Volkswagen brand, said in a statement. “From an economic perspective, however, it was absolutely necessary.”
In an agreement with the works council that represents the company’s employees in Germany, Volkswagen said, the 230 remaining workers at the Dresden plant will be offered severance, retirement packages or the option to transfer to another location.
Volkswagen opened the Dresden plant in 2001, making the Phaeton sedan before switching to the e-Golf hatchback and, most recently, the ID.3 electric car. The final car to be produced on Tuesday, a red ID.3 GTX, will be signed by workers and remain at the facility, which is open for visitor tours.
The company has been hit hard by President Trump’s tariffs, which the company blamed in part for a loss of $1.5 billion last quarter. The company said it expected tariff-related costs to amount to more than $5 billion this year. China’s economic downturn also hit sales of higher-end cars there, which has hurt Porsche, which is majority owned by Volkswagen.
Compounding its struggles, Volkswagen was recently caught in a geopolitical showdown over chips made by Nexperia, which is based in the Netherlands but owned by a Chinese company, Wingtech. Automakers around the world raised alarms over possible chip shortages after the company was taken over by the Dutch government, before control of Nexperia was handed back to Wingtech.
Volkswagen’s woes have mirrored those of the German economy, which shrank in 2023 and 2024 and has been stagnant this year. But Carsten Brzeski, an economist at ING bank, wrote in a report that industrial production in Germany had recently shown “tentative signs of bottoming out.”
Gregory Schmidt is a Times business editor overseeing coverage of the European economy. He is based in London.
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