Audi AG is hiring staff to increase car production, including a 57 percent capacity boost for the 69,600-euro ($101,400) A8 flagship sedan, on expectations that the luxury-auto industry will weather the stock-market slump.
“We’re extremely busy at the moment and have every reason to believe this uptrend will continue for some time, certainly through next year,” Albrecht Reimold, head of the carmaker’s factory in Neckarsulm, Germany, said in a telephone interview.
Audi’s second-biggest plant, where its 111,100-euro R8 sports car and the 48,900-euro A7 four-door coupe are built, is running extra shifts after adding about 500 workers this year
said Reimold. He expects output to jump 21 percent to a record 260,000 vehicles in 2011. The busy assembly lines at the plant in southwest Germany are part of broader expansion at the Volkswagen AG (VOW) unit, which is adding capacity in Spain and boosting production in China. Audi, Bayerische Motoren Werke AG (BMW) and Daimler AG (DAI)’s
Mercedes-Benz are adding shifts, shortening breaks and building new factories, even after economic gloom caused the Stoxx Europe 600 Index to tumble 23 percent from its February peak.
“We’re aware of expectations that conditions may change to the worse, but we trust our own forecasts suggesting that things will stay good,” Reimold said in the Aug. 17 interview from the plant, which employs 14,000 people.
BMW, Audi and Mercedes, the world’s three largest makers of upscale cars, are targeting record deliveries this year, boosted by growing wealth in China and a rebound in spending in the U.S. after the recession.
Still, with U.S. consumer confidence slumping to its lowest level since the 2009 recession and Europe saddled with a government debt crisis, even high-end auto manufacturers will feel the bite of a slowdown eventually, said Marcus Kappler, deputy head of economic analysis at the ZEW Center for European Economic Research in Mannheim, Germany.
“BMW and other German high-end manufacturers are bucking the economy’s stagnant trend” for now, said Kappler. “Over the longer term, German carmakers won’t be able to decouple themselves from an economy that’s clearly normalizing.”
The slowing economy could hit demand for high-end models next year, said Henner Lehne, a Frankfurt-based analyst at research firm IHS Automotive. The research company may lower its forecast for western European luxury-car deliveries in 2012 from its current prediction of a 6.4 percent gain to account for the “new economic realities,” he said.
“We’re extremely busy at the moment and have every reason to believe this uptrend will continue for some time, certainly through next year,” Albrecht Reimold, head of the carmaker’s factory in Neckarsulm, Germany, said in a telephone interview.
Audi’s second-biggest plant, where its 111,100-euro R8 sports car and the 48,900-euro A7 four-door coupe are built, is running extra shifts after adding about 500 workers this year
said Reimold. He expects output to jump 21 percent to a record 260,000 vehicles in 2011. The busy assembly lines at the plant in southwest Germany are part of broader expansion at the Volkswagen AG (VOW) unit, which is adding capacity in Spain and boosting production in China. Audi, Bayerische Motoren Werke AG (BMW) and Daimler AG (DAI)’s
Mercedes-Benz are adding shifts, shortening breaks and building new factories, even after economic gloom caused the Stoxx Europe 600 Index to tumble 23 percent from its February peak.
“We’re aware of expectations that conditions may change to the worse, but we trust our own forecasts suggesting that things will stay good,” Reimold said in the Aug. 17 interview from the plant, which employs 14,000 people.
BMW, Audi and Mercedes, the world’s three largest makers of upscale cars, are targeting record deliveries this year, boosted by growing wealth in China and a rebound in spending in the U.S. after the recession.
Still, with U.S. consumer confidence slumping to its lowest level since the 2009 recession and Europe saddled with a government debt crisis, even high-end auto manufacturers will feel the bite of a slowdown eventually, said Marcus Kappler, deputy head of economic analysis at the ZEW Center for European Economic Research in Mannheim, Germany.
“BMW and other German high-end manufacturers are bucking the economy’s stagnant trend” for now, said Kappler. “Over the longer term, German carmakers won’t be able to decouple themselves from an economy that’s clearly normalizing.”
The slowing economy could hit demand for high-end models next year, said Henner Lehne, a Frankfurt-based analyst at research firm IHS Automotive. The research company may lower its forecast for western European luxury-car deliveries in 2012 from its current prediction of a 6.4 percent gain to account for the “new economic realities,” he said.
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