The obsession to stay in the old paradigm, whatever it takes, gives birth to monsters: Volkswagen has sealed the fate of its car plant in Osnabrück, announcing on Monday that it will sell the plant to Israeli private equity firm Aurelius as the new majority owner and the state of Lower Saxony as the new minority owner. The plant will no longer manufacture cars but will instead produce components for an air defense system developed by the Israeli state-owned company Rafael. Osnabrück employs 3,000 workers, most of whom would be kept. The German federal government plans to purchase the air defense system for Germany to defend against Russian missiles.
There are rumors that the Osnabrück deal might become a model for other troubled plants of VW, for instance in Emden, Hanover, Zwickau, and Neckarsulm. Re-tooling production from e-cars to vehicles urgently needed by the Global South apparently is an idea that has not entered the minds of certain decision-makers in industry and politics.
