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       Why Volkswagen Is Building a Team of 3,000 Engineers in China

       Volkswagen is shifting more operations to China, tapping the country’s electric vehicle capacity and building factories.

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       Shoppers walked past an ID Hub, a Volkswagen showroom for electric cars, at a mall in Shanghai this month. Credit...Qilai Shen for The New York Times

       By Keith Bradsher and Melissa Eddy

       Keith Bradsher reported from Hefei, China, and Melissa Eddy from Berlin.

       Dec. 12, 2023Updated 6:38 a.m. ET

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       A bright orange robot, 10 feet tall, looms over Volkswagen’s new electric car assembly line in central China. It was imported from Germany. The factory’s other 1,074 robots were made in Shanghai.

       Volkswagen used to import shock absorbers from Central Europe for cars it makes at Chinese factories. Now it buys them from a company in China for 40 percent less.

       After relying for decades on engineers in Germany to design cars for the Chinese market, Volkswagen has begun hiring for a team of nearly 3,000 Chinese engineers, which will include hundreds transferred from Volkswagen operations elsewhere in China. They will design electric cars at VW’s industrial complex in Hefei, a city in central China.

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       Keith Bradsher is the Beijing bureau chief for The Times. He previously served as bureau chief in Shanghai, Hong Kong and Detroit and as a Washington correspondent. He has lived and reported in mainland China through the pandemic. More about Keith Bradsher

       Melissa Eddy is based in Berlin and reports on Germany’s politics, businesses and its economy. More about Melissa Eddy

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