Author| Dexin
Editor | Bo Wang
Last Friday, Business Insider broke the news that the popular software organization CARIAD had a major personnel adjustment, and the board of directors was almost wiped out, causing an uproar.
This Monday, Volkswagen's official announcement followed - Peter Bosch, a veteran of the Volkswagen Group and former head of Bentley brand manufacturing, took over the post of CARIAD CEO.
Along with the new CEO: 2 experts in the software field will join the CARIAD Board of Directors, the appointment will be announced shortly.
The new board of directors will consist of Peter Bosch + former CPO Rainer Zugehör + 2 software experts. VW has established a transformation committee to assist CARIAD in restructuring.
The new management team will:
• reshape the organization;
• Accelerate the delivery of E3 electronics and software architecture;
• Sort out the development process of SDV software-defined vehicles;
•Strengthen technical cooperation.
Oliver Blume, CEO of Volkswagen Group, commented on this: "I underestimated the significance of CARIAD to Volkswagen Group when I assumed the role of Group CEO in September last year."
Therefore, the key words of CARIAD in the new stage are roughly: change, collaboration, and delivery.
1. The adjustment direction of CARIAD: focus on core competitiveness
The official announcement of the appointment of Peter Bosch basically set the tone for CARIAAD's next adjustment direction:
- Internally, strengthen collaboration with multiple brands
Peter Bosch is an old man who has served in Volkswagen for more than 12 years, and has helped Bentley transform against the trend and achieve historic growth. He replaces former CARIAD CEO & Dirk Hilgenberg who came from BMW in 2020.
Oliver Blume calls it: a strategist, an enabler, and a team player. He knows enough about the Volkswagen Group.
In this announcement, the words team, relationship, and interface (team, ties, interface) are also mentioned repeatedly. This may be where the management believes that it has not done enough in the past.
On the other hand, during the establishment of CARIAD, all brands and joint ventures under the Volkswagen Group have their own intelligent projects in progress, and these projects overlap with the functions of CARIAD to a certain extent.
Volkswagen wants to become a state of collaboration and unity, rather than retreating to a state of separate brands.
In summary, the announcement mentioned that "CARIAD has optimized the collaboration interface with the brands of the group. Its relationship with the brands of the group will become more intensive."
- Externally, clarify the core competitiveness of CARIAAD and cooperate in car manufacturing
In the previous article "Personnel Earthquake in Volkswagen Software Organization: Where does CARIAD with 5,000 people go?" In ", we have already mentioned that the goal of establishing CARIAD is: to build the software capabilities of the Volkswagen Group, and to pull through the synergy between multiple brands.
When Diess was in office, he proposed a goal for CARIAD: to increase the proportion of self-developed software in the Volkswagen Group from 10% to 60%.
Is it necessary to continue to insist on such a high proportion of self-research? We don't necessarily understand.
Because of the 5 initiatives mentioned in the public announcement, 3 of them are related to this:
•Strengthen CARIAAD's core competitivenessSharpening CARIAD'S core competencies. What is the core competitiveness of CARIAD? As we mentioned earlier, it is the product combination of "E3+VW.OS+VW.AC";
•Realistic sequences for the software architectures;
• Expanding strategic partnerships;
The goal is also very clear: to focus on the interests of customers and combine Volkswagen's core competitiveness with the best solutions on the market (car manufacturing). "This is designed to combine our competencies with the best solutions on the market for the benefit of our customers."
So HiEV understands the adjustment of CARIAAD this time:
Previously, the integrated architecture of software, hardware and cloud plus the development of layered applications that CARIAD wanted to do was very difficult, and the collaboration with the brands in the group was not so smooth.
CARIAD adjusted its strategy, changed its team, and focused on the core parts that need to be mastered and developed;
But the public is also clear that the role of CARIAAD will not be weakened.
For the outside world, there should be more cooperation opportunities open to the public.
2. Peter Bosch: Hero of Bentley's Transformation
The new leadership team of CARIAD has not yet been fully determined, and Peter Bosch will take the lead as CEO on June 1. Bosch is also responsible for CARIAAD's finance, procurement and IT operations.
Bosch has been with the Volkswagen Group for more than 12 years. Bosch joined the Bentley group from the Volkswagen Wolfsburg headquarters in Germany in 2017 at the age of 43, so it is about the 1975 generation.
Former Bentley head of manufacturing Peter Bosch
Previously, he worked on strategy, process and architecture at Volkswagen Group from 2011 to 2017; earlier, he worked as a strategic consultant for OEMs for nearly 10 years at Oliver Wyman, a consulting firm at Ovi.
Coincidentally, the year after Bosch joined Bentley Motors, 2018, was a historical low point for Bentley.
It sold 10,494 cars that year, with a loss of 288 million euros. In the next few years, Bentley's business has been on the rise. By last year, Bentley had historically sold more than 15,000 cars and made an annual profit of 708 million euros.
The ultra-luxury brand has achieved a profit reversal of nearly 1 billion euros in 5 years, especially during this period, the new crown epidemic, the shortage of semiconductor chips, the war in Ukraine and the recession in the UK, so this is also known as Bentley's legendary five years.
Bentley has only one factory in Crewe, England in the world, and Bosch is the person in charge of manufacturing.
Bentley's hero model in the past five years is undoubtedly the SUV Bentayga. By 2022, this car will account for 42% of Bentley's total sales; the Bentley Continental will account for nearly 1/3 of the total sales. The Flying Spur series brought Bentley into the hybrid field.
Peter Bosch's experience has proven his ability to deliver in challenging circumstances.
In the auto industry, the last car company leader who was promoted because of his excellent delivery was Tesla's Tom Zhu Zhu Xiaotong. Tesla happened to be the car company Diess admired most when he was in office.
It is also worth noting that the original Board of Directors of CARIAD only retained one executive—Chief Human Resources Officer Rainer Zugehör. What is unique about Zugehör?
On the left is Rainer Zugehör, on the right is Diess' Netflix book "Eclectic"
During the last period of his tenure, Diess talked about, "To be successful CARIAD needs a software culture", when Rainer Zugehör and CEO Dirk Hilgenberg were referring to the Internet company Netflix Experience builds CARIAAD's culture.
Therefore, with the combination of Peter Bosch, software experts and Rainer Zugehör, CARIAD not only seeks the integration of the automobile industry and Internet culture, but also seeks the integration of car manufacturing and software.
But in general, "delivery" comes first.
