Audi’s retreat from its pledge to abandon new combustion engines is yet another grim marker of the West’s faltering transition to electric vehicles—an industry paralyzed by the looming spectre of deindustrialization. The German automaker, now slashing 7,500 jobs, embodies a once-mighty industry now cannibalizing itself in the face of ruthless global competition.

The company, a subsidiary of Volkswagen, is no longer certain it will meet its 2026 deadline for launching its final gas-powered model. It faces an onslaught from Chinese EV start-ups and the self-inflicted wounds of its parent company’s failed software ambitions. Profits have cratered—down 38% last year—as consumers, battered by economic precarity, delay major purchases.

The job cuts come not with mass firings, but the more palatable guise of voluntary redundancies and pre-retirement packages—management’s preferred method of slow strangulation. Workers are promised security until 2033, but the writing is already on the wall: Germany’s industrial backbone is buckling. The collapse of Audi’s 75-year-old Brussels plant, the once-heralded launchpad of its electric future, underscores the depth of the crisis.

Yet, even as it hemorrhages profits and sheds jobs, Audi clings to the spectacle of Formula 1, where it still plans to debut in 2026—a desperate bid to remain relevant in an era where power has long since shifted elsewhere. The promise of an electric revolution has given way to a familiar story: corporations scrambling to protect their bottom line while workers are left to bear the cost of a crumbling system.