New Pricelist, Effective 01/05/2020

[monkeyhanger]

The other interesting point is the Arteon is now stock only like the golf mk7. This could be due to a factory closure or maybe canning it as per the CC before it. The Arteon is a lovely car, but it’s basically an Audi A5 for similar money. I like VWs, but they’re not what I’d class as a premium brand compared to Merc, BMW, Audi, Lexus, etc.

VW like to see themselves as semi-premium, but what does premium even mean? The difference between a VW and an Audi in the same segment is pretty much just in spending a smidge more on the interior for the Audi. Soft plastics seen in a few more areas. For certain models, the VW has cone very close to the Audi - the A1's interior doesn't really look/feel any better than the Polo (it gets nicer rear clusters though), the Golf is as plush as the A3.

Audi have been known to put old tech engines in to lower the price point e.g. Polo blue motion 1.4ACT and Audi made the ye-olde 75ps 1.4 available in the last gen A1 to keep the headline price down.

Although they feel nice and solid, I think BMW interiors look a bit cheap in places - dash plastics coated in sliver paint on a 4 series I hired about a year ago.

People do expect to have an Audi rather than a VW when they're paying Audi money. Trouble with cars bigger than a Golf is that they're usually bought by fleet for company cars and depreciation for retail customers is awful. Not many people buy a brand new A6 privately.

[lancslad1985]

I completely agree and I like VW cars. The Arteon is a lovely car (I’ve had the pleasure of driving the petrol 2.0L) but it’s the money. Your average Joe won’t pay Audi money for a VW. It’s a problem Volvo also have - again they’re lovely cars having owned one myself, but they want BMW/Audi money.

At least the showrooms are opening 1/6 again.

[SRGTD]

I can remember when the perception was that VW build quality was better than the majority of the mainstream brands, and I think that some would-be buyers may still consider this to be the case. Admittedly, the doors and tailgate on my Polo shut with a more satisfying, solid sounding thud than the doors and (especially) the tailgate on my neighbour’s Fiesta but I agree, VW’s aren’t a premium product and the dealership network and after sales service is pretty mediocre (there are a few decent VW dealerships out there if you can find them). People still buy VW’s though - probably because they drive better than much of the competition.

One for VW to watch is the Asian car manufacturers, who have moved their game on significantly over the years. Historically, their sales have been helped by generous warranties to make up for other shortcomings, such as poor build quality. However, IMO they’ve upped their game over recent years and their build quality probably isn’t that far behind the likes of VW - helped no doubt when car makers such as Hyundai recruit ex VAG Peter Schreyer and Luc Donckerwolke (both held senior design positions within VAG). I think they do lag behind in terms of the tech they fit in their cars though. However, they’re producing some interesting cars in the performance car segment - like the Hyundai i30N, following the recruitment of Albert Beirmann (ex head of BMW M division).

If VW consider themselves to be semi-premium and price their products as such, then they may find themselves losing sales and market share to some of the competition that they probably haven’t considered as serious competition in the past.

[monkeyhanger]

The Korean manufacturers are really behind in all the clever tech the bigger players have like Variable valve opening/Budack cycle, cylinder deactivation technology etc. to name but a few.

I did have a test drive in an i30N. It wasn't a bad car to drive, but mpg was awful - 23mpg on a 20 mile run that could've seen easily 35mpg out of a Golf GTI TCR. That's down to a lack of that subtle fuel saving tech the likes of VAG, BMW, Ford etc. employ. Their engines seem to be about 10 years behind the curve for sophistication. They replicate rather than innovate. The interiors need to be less cheap looking and feeling too. Now they're established, Kias and Hyundais are no longer that cheap, the residuals are pretty poor to - making them quite an expensive ownership proposition.

[stuartrendall]

Not sure of how much relevance this stat will be but I worked at Toyota for a while who have the highest productivity rate of any car manufacturer and per car the price to make the car was under £1000 including labour, materials and running cost. An unpainted bumper cost only 13pence to manufacture also. The profit from after vehicle sales is extremely lucrative for vehicle manufacturers. Obviously the final price also depends on R&D costs, tax and the dealers cut but would be interesting to see where they break even in a vehicles life cycle.

£1000? I find that extremely hard to believe. 25 years ago I worked at the Ford Transit van plant and they used to post the true cost of building a Transit van on the productivity stats boards - it was about £6500 back then. That did make inclusions for R&D and warranty.

I think you'll find the overall manufacturing cost of most cars to be around 40% of UK RRP for UK spec. They can make them cheaper for other markets by cutting down on tech, putting a less advanced engine in that's already paid off its R&D, steel wheels etc.. They then sell on to the distributor for your region (in this case VW UK for us Brits) who foot the bill for local marketing, warranty and transport. They still need to make a profit. If VW GmbH make more than 50% profit from each car, i'd be amazed.

There's no way in the world an unpainted Toyota bumper costs them 13p. The crude oil needed for one bumper before it is even refined, polymerised and used to make the plastics will cost more than that. Moulding tooling to make those bumpers and maintainance of said tooling, as well as doesn't come cheap and it's an energy intensive process. £15 at the bottom end I could just about believe.

I can assure you that less than £1000 (although not much less) was the real cost not including tax, dealers cut and external costs to the company. Toyota had an extremely efficient and complicated production line and they used to love to flaunt their statistics. The efficiency percentage in the area that I worked in was 99.8% and if it dropped to 99.7% that would be a bad day and people would have to do over time. Also at Toyota they have the fastest bumper injection process of all manufacturers with VW even having a tour around to see how it worked. We used to change the 20 tonne moulds on a machine in less than 40 seconds compared to 3 hours at most other plants around the world thanks to the clever machines. Because of how fast and smart the machines were, making bumpers wafer thin 2 bumpers every few seconds the price per bumper was around 13p without anything on them.

I remember once the process was so quick the static from the pipes that the plastic pellets were transferred to caused a fire. It is a crazy thing to see in person those machines.

[monkeyhanger]

Not sure of how much relevance this stat will be but I worked at Toyota for a while who have the highest productivity rate of any car manufacturer and per car the price to make the car was under £1000 including labour, materials and running cost. An unpainted bumper cost only 13pence to manufacture also. The profit from after vehicle sales is extremely lucrative for vehicle manufacturers. Obviously the final price also depends on R&D costs, tax and the dealers cut but would be interesting to see where they break even in a vehicles life cycle.

£1000? I find that extremely hard to believe. 25 years ago I worked at the Ford Transit van plant and they used to post the true cost of building a Transit van on the productivity stats boards - it was about £6500 back then. That did make inclusions for R&D and warranty.

I think you'll find the overall manufacturing cost of most cars to be around 40% of UK RRP for UK spec. They can make them cheaper for other markets by cutting down on tech, putting a less advanced engine in that's already paid off its R&D, steel wheels etc.. They then sell on to the distributor for your region (in this case VW UK for us Brits) who foot the bill for local marketing, warranty and transport. They still need to make a profit. If VW GmbH make more than 50% profit from each car, i'd be amazed.

There's no way in the world an unpainted Toyota bumper costs them 13p. The crude oil needed for one bumper before it is even refined, polymerised and used to make the plastics will cost more than that. Moulding tooling to make those bumpers and maintainance of said tooling, as well as doesn't come cheap and it's an energy intensive process. £15 at the bottom end I could just about believe.

I can assure you that less than £1000 (although not much less) was the real cost not including tax, dealers cut and external costs to the company. Toyota had an extremely efficient and complicated production line and they used to love to flaunt their statistics. The efficiency percentage in the area that I worked in was 99.8% and if it dropped to 99.7% that would be a bad day and people would have to do over time. Also at Toyota they have the fastest bumper injection process of all manufacturers with VW even having a tour around to see how it worked. We used to change the 20 tonne moulds on a machine in less than 40 seconds compared to 3 hours at most other plants around the world thanks to the clever machines. Because of how fast and smart the machines were, making bumpers wafer thin 2 bumpers every few seconds the price per bumper was around 13p without anything on them.

I remember once the process was so quick the static from the pipes that the plastic pellets were transferred to caused a fire. It is a crazy thing to see in person those machines.

Are you not mixing up process costs with material costs? If Toyota thermoform their own bumpers, I could well believe that the cost of pressing the plastic costs 13p a bumper, but all in price I just can't buy it - the plastic raw material will be in excess of a pound a bumper. Locally, Nissan Sunderland is the most efficient car plant in Europe. In its best year it made 507,000 cars. They have 7000 workers and the average operator is on £26k a year. Take that £26k and assume it is the site average wage (for every 10 cleaners or canteen workers on substantially less than that, you'll have Engineers and managers on substantially more. So labour cost alone per car is £359. Cost to employer will be 20% higher than that by the time you add in employers NI and Pension contribution it's about £400. There's about £70 of steel in a car at scrap prices - at least half that again in properly processed sheets for the body shop presses, so already, you've got the labour and steel for the body only, and you have about £500 left for the rest of the car - drivetrain, axles, steering rack, wheels, tyres, interior Not a cat in hells chance that a Toyota costs £1000 to make all in, not even an Aygo. £1000 for the cost per car of running the plant (Utilities consumption, staff wages, buildings and machinery maintenance and depreciation) - now that's more like it.

[stuartrendall]

The labour costs for the full car is spread per car as each car spends less than 60 seconds per employee and the majority of the process is automated such as pressing, welding etc. And the process of making a bumper is completely automated. I myself was maintenance there for a while and from experience there isn't a huge amount of employees. Only in the assembly area is there a large amount of employees and in the transport area but everywhere else doesn't have a huge amount. It is a mesmerising process to watch a car work its way through the plant.

[monkeyhanger]

The labour costs for the full car is spread per car as each car spends less than 60 seconds per employee and the majority of the process is automated such as pressing, welding etc. And the process of making a bumper is completely automated. I myself was maintenance there for a while and from experience there isn't a huge amount of employees. Only in the assembly area is there a large amount of employees and in the transport area but everywhere else doesn't have a huge amount. It is a mesmerising process to watch a car work its way through the plant.

I did just spread an educated cost for the Nissan plant across all the cars made at their best output and it's pushing on for over £400 per vehicle. If their output goes down and their staffing levels stay up, staffing cost per car goes even higher. Wide diversity of people in a csr plant supporting the operation as a whole- maintenance engineers for the equipment, tooling and robots, robot programmers, operators, shift leaders, line design engineers, project managers, cleaners, security, canteen staff, IT, HR.... the list goes on. All those wages need to be accounted for. All the tooling has a purchase cost and an ongoing maintenance cost, with acquisition cost spread over a number of years for even expenditure.

I worked at Ford Southampton seasonally for 5 years while I did my A-levels and degree. Bodyshop pressing and welding was mainly automated with an inspection and correction crew at the end of the process. The corrosion protection and paint shop.again was pretty much automated apart from maintenance, but once you get into assembly, it's mainly people screwing in everything bolted to the interior with air tools and lining up axles/drivetrain as the robots carry the load.

Efficiency has improved a fair bit with careful planning of processes - all the big players are pretty efficient. Not quite at Toyota/Nissan/Honda levels, but only a few % away in most cases.

There's a lot of theft in these places - the employee car park used to be across a nain road from the plant. The security guards were also fully trained firefighters and paramedics - they were on £25 an hour 20 years ago.

They rushed out one day for a Ford employee collapsed in the middle of the road going back to his car after his shift. They pulled his coat off to give him CPR, only to find 2 starter motors joined by a cord, hung around his neck under his coat - he'd knocked himself out cutting off his blood supply. Another time 3 new vans peeled away from a transport convoy to Barton Park. The stolen vans were recovered very quickly, they had a new design of wing mirror that hadn't made it onto any retail vans yet.

All the parts back then that were bought in were generally procured at around 15% RRP e.g. todays prices, £80 battery at Halfords is £12, £15 for an 18" tyre, about £35 per 18" alloy wheel etc.

Even with the relatively cheap labour it the VW SA plant, I doubt they make a Polo GTI+ for less than £6k cost to the plant. If VW could name a £23k car for £1000 or even £2k, they wouldn't be €200Bn in debt, they'd be swimming around in hold like Scrooge Mc Duck.

[stuartrendall]

The labour costs for the full car is spread per car as each car spends less than 60 seconds per employee and the majority of the process is automated such as pressing, welding etc. And the process of making a bumper is completely automated. I myself was maintenance there for a while and from experience there isn't a huge amount of employees. Only in the assembly area is there a large amount of employees and in the transport area but everywhere else doesn't have a huge amount. It is a mesmerising process to watch a car work its way through the plant.

I did just spread an educated cost for the Nissan plant across all the cars made at their best output and it's pushing on for over £400 per vehicle. If their output goes down and their staffing levels stay up, staffing cost per car goes even higher. Wide diversity of people in a csr plant supporting the operation as a whole- maintenance engineers for the equipment, tooling and robots, robot programmers, operators, shift leaders, line design engineers, project managers, cleaners, security, canteen staff, IT, HR.... the list goes on. All those wages need to be accounted for. All the tooling has a purchase cost and an ongoing maintenance cost, with acquisition cost spread over a number of years for even expenditure.

I worked at Ford Southampton seasonally for 5 years while I did my A-levels and degree. Bodyshop pressing and welding was mainly automated with an inspection and correction crew at the end of the process. The corrosion protection and paint shop.again was pretty much automated apart from maintenance, but once you get into assembly, it's mainly people screwing in everything bolted to the interior with air tools and lining up axles/drivetrain as the robots carry the load.

Efficiency has improved a fair bit with careful planning of processes - all the big players are pretty efficient. Not quite at Toyota/Nissan/Honda levels, but only a few % away in most cases.

There's a lot of theft in these places - the employee car park used to be across a nain road from the plant. The security guards were also fully trained firefighters and paramedics - they were on £25 an hour 20 years ago.

They rushed out one day for a Ford employee collapsed in the middle of the road going back to his car after his shift. They pulled his coat off to give him CPR, only to find 2 starter motors joined by a cord, hung around his neck under his coat - he'd knocked himself out cutting off his blood supply. Another time 3 new vans peeled away from a transport convoy to Barton Park. The stolen vans were recovered very quickly, they had a new design of wing mirror that hadn't made it onto any retail vans yet.

All the parts back then that were bought in were generally procured at around 15% RRP e.g. todays prices, £80 battery at Halfords is £12, £15 for an 18" tyre, about £35 per 18" alloy wheel etc.

Even with the relatively cheap labour it the VW SA plant, I doubt they make a Polo GTI+ for less than £6k cost to the plant. If VW could name a £23k car for £1000 or even £2k, they wouldn't be €200Bn in debt, they'd be swimming around in hold like Scrooge Mc Duck.

I understand what you mean. The cost that I mentioned didn't include the external factors such as R&D, maintenance, and other overheads. It was just the cost of materials, running the machine for just 1 car and the maintenance for just that 1 car so I imagine it would have been quite a complicated sum figuring out the cost over a year/month/week whatever it would have been and narrowing it down to a single car. I remember when I was there we did a Kaizen and someone managed to save like 12p per car by designing a tool and it was a huge thing. Not sure how it would be in other plants but I know Toyota are top of their game.