> tried to enter the Chinese market only to get the crap kicked out of it
That's a massive rewriting of history.
VW was one of the earliest foreign automotive manufacturers to enter the Chinese market.
In the 1990s and 2000s, the Volkswagen Jetta was China's Model T. And until 2023, VW was the top selling car brand in China.
And that was the crux of the issue - VW grew complacent by leveraging "Made in Germany" branding to sell in China, while not investing in innovation.
This meant that when Chinese challenger brands like BYD could outcompete VW in China, VW as a whole suffered.
Already VW has lost significant market share in the US after the emissions scandal and is functionally non-existent in Japan, Korea, Brazil, and India.
China was their last growth market within which they held dominance, and they lost it.
This is a common story for "Made in Germany" - German manufacturers strategically chose China in the 2000s for greenfield FDI, and unlike most other European countries, Germany's economy is extremely coupled with China (France and the UK were more diversified with France leveraging LatAm and India and the UK leveraging NA and India).
> VW grew complacent by leveraging "Made in Germany" branding to sell in China
Designed in Germany, almost all VWs sold in China (including black Audis government officials loved) were made in China under three 49/51 JVs (with VW as the minority owner). The majority owners in tern graduated with VW technology/know-how and combined with EV tech to sell under their own brands, although not as successful as BYD. Even BYD had its own 49/51 JV with Mercedes for a decade.
The only foreign auto manufacturer allowed to operate in China outside of a minority JV is Tesla.
Did people in the US really stop buying VWs because of the diesel emissisions stuff? Almost nobody in the US buys diesel passenger cars anyway. I could not care less about a cheat on roughly zero percent of cars sold. Diesel emissions could be totally unregulated and it would not make any difference -- nobody buys them anyway.
That's a massive rewriting of history.
VW was one of the earliest foreign automotive manufacturers to enter the Chinese market.
In the 1990s and 2000s, the Volkswagen Jetta was China's Model T. And until 2023, VW was the top selling car brand in China.
And that was the crux of the issue - VW grew complacent by leveraging "Made in Germany" branding to sell in China, while not investing in innovation.
This meant that when Chinese challenger brands like BYD could outcompete VW in China, VW as a whole suffered.
Already VW has lost significant market share in the US after the emissions scandal and is functionally non-existent in Japan, Korea, Brazil, and India.
China was their last growth market within which they held dominance, and they lost it.
This is a common story for "Made in Germany" - German manufacturers strategically chose China in the 2000s for greenfield FDI, and unlike most other European countries, Germany's economy is extremely coupled with China (France and the UK were more diversified with France leveraging LatAm and India and the UK leveraging NA and India).