# Volkswagen Is Betting Its European Turnaround on Four Small, Cheap Electric Cars > CEO Oliver Blume unveiled a For Europe strategy built around four Spanish-made urban EVs that already have nearly 150,000 preorders, while the group plans to cut a million vehicles of excess capacity and protect close to 476,000 jobs against cheaper Chinese rivals. - Source: Italian Insider - Canonical URL: https://italianinsider.net/en/article/volkswagen-is-betting-its-european-turnaround-on-four-small-cheap-electric-cars - Author: Italian Insider Staff - Section: Business - Other edition: https://italianinsider.net/article/volkswagen-is-betting-its-european-turnaround-on-four-small-cheap-electric-cars - Published: 2026-10-12T16:53:28.368Z - Updated: 2026-10-12T16:53:28.368Z - Tags: Volkswagen, Electric vehicles, Oliver Blume, European auto industry --- Volkswagen chief executive Oliver Blume presented the group's new European strategy in Paris this month, betting the company's recovery on a family of small, affordably priced electric cars built on the continent for European drivers. Called For Europe, the plan leans directly into the line Blume used to describe it: Europe, he said, is not a market for Volkswagen, it is the company's home, its cradle. The centerpiece is a set of four urban electric models built in Spain: the Volkswagen ID. Polo, the Volkswagen ID. Cross, the Skoda Epiq and the Cupra Raval, sharing underlying technology across the group's brands while each is styled and tuned for its own badge. Volkswagen says the four models had already drawn nearly 150,000 preorders before a single car had been delivered. Werner Tietz, the group's head of research and development, described the approach behind the family as sharing technology where it creates value for the customer and keeping each brand distinct where customers can actually tell the difference. The urgency behind the plan is capacity Volkswagen does not currently need. The group estimates roughly 500,000 vehicles a year of excess production capacity across its European plants, concentrated at sites including Emden, Hannover, Zwickau and Neckarsulm. The broader plan calls for cutting output capacity by about a million vehicles, bringing the group's total down to roughly nine million a year, a reduction that falls directly on the same German plants carrying the overcapacity now. Behind the restructuring sits a rough stretch of numbers. Volkswagen's global deliveries fell 14.3 percent in the third quarter, with deliveries in China down 38.5 percent, and group profit dropped 30.6 percent from 2023 levels. Chinese manufacturers including BYD and Leapmotor have been taking European market share with pricing Volkswagen's traditional cost base struggles to match, even as a European Union agreement with Beijing caps Chinese hybrid vehicle imports at 350,000 a year with only a 6 percent annual increase allowed. The For Europe plan is pitched as protecting close to 476,000 jobs tied to the group's European manufacturing base while it makes that math work. What the plan amounts to is a bet that Volkswagen can out-build Chinese rivals on their own turf, cheap and small, before the capacity cuts and the sales declines compound each other. The ID. Polo and its three siblings are the test of that bet, built in Spain, priced for a market Volkswagen is no longer treating as one option among many. --- Originally published by Italian Insider. Free to cite with attribution and a link to https://italianinsider.net/en/article/volkswagen-is-betting-its-european-turnaround-on-four-small-cheap-electric-cars.