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Coming off a busy week, Volkswagen never ceases to be talked about in terms of radical changes. In the middle of last week, Europe’s largest car manufacturer experienced a 24-hour crisis on its computer network. The consequence was a halt in production at most plants in Germany. Then on Friday the decision came to build the car of the future, the Trinity project already postponed several times, in the Zwickau plant, dedicated to electric cars, instead of in Wolfsburg, which according to the plans of the previous management led by Herbert Diess should have doubled with investments initially estimated at one billion.
Meanwhile on Thursday, the German newspaper Handelsblatt revealed, the CEO of Cariad (the group unit dedicated to software development), Peter Bosch, announced the hiring of Sanjay Lal, former manager of Google, but also ex-Tesla and ex Cisco. Cariad is banking on the newcomer to get out of the quicksand of development: difficulties and delays have slowed down the launch of new and important models. Sanjay Lal recently developed a new software platform for Rivian, an American manufacturer of SUVs and pick-ups. It should start in November.
CEO Oliver Blume’s Volkswagen is racing to close the distance from the competition, both Tesla and the more aggressive Chinese companies such as BYD. The historical phase is complex, given that orders are decreasing, so much so that the German group has had to make difficult decisions, not renewing around 300 fixed-term contracts in Zwickau. The group’s management board on Friday informed the supervisory board about the brand’s model allocation plans until 2028, setting up its industrial sites to ensure profitable use of production capacity and to achieve the economic results expected in the coming years.
By setting up the future production network in Germany, Volkswagen aims to achieve the most efficient model allocation and simultaneous increase in productivity, two key aspects of the strategic program Accelerate Forward – Road to 6.5 undertaken by the brand.
«Our industry faces complex challenges as it is experiencing a transformation that is being conducted under difficult business conditions – said Thomas Schäfer, CEO of the Volkswagen brand – and it is even more important to prepare our individual plants and the Volkswagen production network in Germany for the future”. The aim is for the factories to produce different models on the technical basis of a single architecture.