Surging SUV demand is spooking German workers building sedans

Bloomberg

Germany’s car industry built its world-class reputation on sedans like the Audi A4, the BMW 5-Series and the Volkswagen Passat, reliable models that look good in the family driveway or company lot.
But a shift in consumer taste to more hulking vehicles is coming at the worst possible time.
Demand for sport utility vehicles that initially took hold in America has spread across the globe, dramatically changing the product mix of carmakers along with their production footprint.
Higher sales of
the lucrative vehicles, while good for German manufacturers overall, threatens to hurt the workforce in factories at home that are heavily geared toward traditional sedans and hatchbacks.

Rising Tide
At BMW AG, sales of SUVs made mostly in the US account for 44% of all global deliveries, up from 24% a decade ago — with a corresponding drop for models like the bread-and-butter 5-Series made at the Dingolfing plant near Munich.
The trend is similar at Audi, which churns out SUVs mainly in Mexico, Hungary and Slovakia, and Mercedes, whose workers in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, can’t make the massive GLE fast enough to satisfy demand.
Germany’s automotive industry, the largest employer with about 830,000 workers, is already straining under the biggest production drop in nearly a decade.
That has helped push Europe’s largest economy closer to recession.