The electric mobility shift is already happening in Africa. ⚡ 🚌 From buses to motorbikes and bicycles, e-mobility is taking to the streets across the continent, helping #BeatAirPollution# and cut emissions. Read on:

The VW Group lacks Sufficient Orders It comes as no surprise that VW’s existing overcapacity is a major problem; any other company would have long since closed plants and laid off staff, but VW is partly a political entity and cannot act as a purely commercial enterprise might wish. Political influence was a strength during times of growth, but it is now a major weakness during times of contraction. VW CEO Blume states that a shutdown of the plants in Emden, Hanover, Zwickau, and the Audi site in Neckarsulm has not yet been decided. It remains a last resort, and one that is always the most expensive in the short term. At the same time, he acknowledged that "we cannot yet present a competitive production plan for the 2030s" for these four sites, meaning VW lacks sufficient orders to keep them running. This is despite the fact that the Zwickau factory, for instance, is considered a pioneer of electric mobility within Volkswagen; only electric vehicles have been built there since 2020. However, because demand for the models produced there has recently been too low, the workforce has already shrunk from 11,000 to the current 8,000. Furthermore, plans to cut more than 1,000 additional jobs have already been finalized, and one of the two production lines is scheduled to be shut down next year. I anticipate that all four sites will have to be shut down over the coming years.

The world calls Foxconn a “box mover.” 📦 Their Chairman, Young Liu disagrees. Today I met Young Liu, Chairman of @HonHai_Foxconn, here in Taiwan, and that was a conversation that will stay with me for a long time. First of all, you don't meet a chairman of one of the biggest companies in the world every week. Alright, so here's the reaaally interesting part! He said the world still tends to see Foxconn as a “box mover”, a company that just assembles electronics someone else designed. Then he brought his numbers: → Over 1 million employees worldwide → 120,000+ engineers → 78,000 system designers → ~2,500 patents in 2025 alone That’s not a workforce built for moving boxes. Definitely not. That’s a workforce built for designing what goes in them. And that’s the shift he’s driving. Foxconn is not doing the vertical aggregation but vertical integration! → Vertical aggregation: assembly, molding, producing the parts (just being the contractor) → Vertical integration: co-design, co-development, co-validation, participating in the full end-to-end process You see it in the AI server business, where Foxconn now works hand in hand with NVIDIA, and where AI servers are set to make up more than half of its server revenue this year. And the part that landed closest to home: Poland. 🇵🇱 Foxconn is building toward EV production in Poland with ElectroMobility Poland, a technology hub in Jaworzno, platforms from its Foxtron arm, and first cars targeted for 2029 under Polish control. Actually while asked why Poland, he said it reminds him of Taiwan. He pointed to the flexibility, the dynamism, and the work ethic. The company everyone files under “assembly” is quietly becoming a design and engineering partner, on three continents at once. Damn, what a day! Expect tons of content from Taiwan! 🇹🇼 ~~  ♻️ Join the weekly robotics newsletter, and never miss any news →