Volkswagen, the leading European carmaker, faced a substantial IT outage on Wednesday, causing a halt in production at its eponymous brand in Germany. The outage had a cascading effect, impacting the entire Volkswagen Group, which encompasses renowned brands like Porsche AG and Audi.
A spokesperson for Audi confirmed the disruption in production within the division, emphasizing that the extent of the impact was under careful analysis. Porsche AG had no immediate comment on the matter, Reuters news report said.
This incident compounds Volkswagen’s challenges, as the company is already dealing with reduced production at its all-electric Zwickau plant due to muted demand for battery-powered vehicles, potentially necessitating changes to the existing three-shift system.
Volkswagen detailed that the disruption resulted from an unspecified “IT malfunction of network components” at its global headquarters located in Wolfsburg, Germany. The repercussions of this IT breakdown were felt across multiple German sites, including Emden, Osnabrueck, Hanover, Dresden, and Zwickau, as well as component factories in Braunschweig, Kassel, Chemnitz, and Salzgitter.
Volkswagen did not reveal the name of its technology partner.
“The fault has been present since 12:30 p.m. (CET) and is currently being analysed. There are implications for vehicle-producing plants,” Volkswagen reported. However, the company stated that, based on current analyses, an external attack was unlikely to be the cause of the system malfunction. The Volkswagen Group has emphasized that rectifying this issue is of the highest priority and that efforts to resolve the problem are well underway.
The IT outage at this scale showcases the vulnerability of major industrial entities to technological disruptions and the importance of swift remediation to minimize impacts on production and the automotive industry as a whole.
In the first half of 2023, the Volkswagen brand grew unit sales by 25 percent from 1.22 million vehicles in the same period last year to 1.52 million vehicles in 2023. Volkswagen’s sales revenue increased from EUR 33.32 billion in the first half of 2022 to EUR 42.95 billion in the same period in 2023. Operating profit of Volkswagen was EUR 1.64 billion, compared with EUR 1.86 billion for the same period in 2022.
