The Volkswagen Group plans to cut up to 30,000 jobs in Germany as it scrabbles to improve its profitability.
The job cuts, affecting around 10% of the firm's workforce in the nation, would hit its research and development division the hardest, according to German trade publication Manager Magazin.
Some 4000-6000 of its roughly 13,000 R&D staff would be made redundant, it reported.
The Volkswagen Group has also reneged on a union agreement guaranteeing job security at six German factories until 2020, as it considers shuttering two of them.
