‘You need to clean up the mess your generation has left’: Volkswagen’s guilty boomer gets real about sustainability, China—and his spam folder

When a recruiter’s email about a job at Volkswagen showed up in Dirk Voeste’s email, he missed it at first. “Normally I don’t look at the spam folder,” he said. When he looked again, the pitch seemed implausible.

The message described a company with €80 billion in annual revenue that was looking for a chief sustainability officer. Volkswagen was far bigger than that—roughly €240 billion in annual sales, Voeste recalled—and he had not been looking to leave BASF, where he had spent 22 years in sustainability, agriculture and biotechnology.

Still, he opened the message. He raised the opportunity with his wife, then with his adult children.

His daughter, he said, gave him the answer.

“You need to clean up the mess your generation has left.”

Voeste took the job, even though, he said, he “didn’t know anyone” and had no idea if he would succeed.

His daughter’s remark has become a kind of private mission statement for the 64-year-old biologist now charged with helping remake one of Germany’s biggest industrial institutions.

Volkswagen’s sustainability chief met with Fortune during Climate Week in New York and talked about decarbonization, biodiversity and recycling. But his real subject was the unraveling of an old economic compact: the one under which German manufacturing delivered well-paid jobs, global export power and consumer prosperity while passing a growing environmental and industrial bill to younger generations.

For the son of a florist from post-industrial Dortmund, he said, it hit home.

The bill is coming due just as Volkswagen faces an unsettling commercial fact. China, once the company’s most important source of growth and a market where foreign automakers helped build a modern supplier base, is now producing faster-moving, lower-cost EV competitors that are challenging German manufacturers in their traditional stronghold.

Fortune recently reported that “China has arrived,” highlighting a broader reversal for Europe: China is moving beyond low-cost manufacturing to compete in the higher-value industries—including cars and machinery—that made Germany wealthy. Volkswagen’s experience in China is among the clearest examples. The company’s deliveries in the country fell 36.6% in the second quarter as local rivals accelerated their gains in a brutal EV market.

A spokesperson for Volkswagen acknowledged to Fortune that the Chinese automotive market has declined by 20% year-over-year and is under increasing pressure (Volkswagen’s share has declined by 26%), citing factors such as changes in subsidy and tax policies, rising fuel prices and ongoing price competition affecting consumer confidence and weighing on overall demand. The electrification of the market continues to accelerate and Volkswagen’s all-electric vehicle sales are still growing steadily, they added, while Volkswagen remains the leader in combustion-engine vehicles with a market share over 22%.“Against this background, we expect the overall market for new vehicles to decline to below 21 million........

© Fortune