Herbert Diess had been on the hot seat for months in the giant with twelve brands engaged in a forced march to the electric and connected car.
Le Monde with AFP
The boss of the automotive giant Volkswagen, Herbert Diess, will leave the management of the group, announced Volkswagen on Friday July 22. This surprise departure was decided “by mutual agreement” at a meeting of the Volkswagen Supervisory Board, according to a statement. However, nothing suggested his departure. This Friday again, he wanted on LinkedIn a “well -deserved summer break” to his employees.
It will be replaced from September by the current Chairman of the Porsche Management Board, Oliver Blume, a subsidiary of the Volkswagen group.
period of tensions with staff representatives
Herbert Diess had been on the hot seat for months in the giant with twelve brands engaged in a forced march to the electric car and connected. He had so far always saved his head.
“Herbert Diess played a key role in continuing the business transformation during his mandate” at the head of Volkswagen and the eponymous brand, said the chairman of the supervisory board, Hans Dieter Pötsch, in a press release . “He not only directed the company in extremely difficult waters, but he also fundamentally realized it strategically,” he added.
At the end of 2021, Mr. Diess, who came from BMW with an uncompromising reputation as a winner of a period of tensions with the powerful staff representatives. At the origin of the internal turbulence, the management style and the human electrification strategy that had taken the steering wheel of Volkswagen in 2018 with the ambition of definitively turning the page of the “dieselgate”. Volkswagen had indeed recognized in the fall of 2015 having equipped 11 million of its diesel vehicles with software capable of hiding emissions sometimes exceeding the authorized standards up to forty times. The investigations on this scandal had long been slowed down by a legal battle before the Court of Justice of the European Union, but the latter finally confirmed at the end of 2020 the illegality of the Volkswagen software.
Porsche manager in control 2>
Since the beginning of the year, Mr. Diess had already given up responsibility for operations in China, a strategic market, to another heavyweight of the company, obtaining in compensation for the supervision of the CARIAD entity, de Volkswagen responsible for code software at the heart of the electric and connected revolution hired by the automotive sector.
Irony of history, due to the slowness of the progress made by Cariad, Porsche has recently decided to break the partnership with this unit to develop its own IT solutions.
This choice was made by the future replacement of Mr. Diess at the head of Volkswagen. Oliver Blume has been running Porsche since 2015. He joined the group in 1994, successively occupying management positions within the Audi, Seat and Volkswagen brands. He has been a member of the Board of Volkswagen since 2018.