The new head of the Volkswagen Group says his priority is to make the world’s biggest auto group ready for a rapid technological change.
The world’s largest carmaker fenced its pack Thursday when it announced that former BMW executive Herbert Diess wish replace Matthias Mueller, the former head of Porsche who took outstanding following the diesel emissions scandal in late 2015.
Diess told CNBC’s Annette Weisbach at the company headquarters in Wolfsburg Friday that the most momentous thing is to cope with rapid changes affecting the auto labour.
“There is not much room for decision making when it comes to new technologies and autonomous get-up-and-go. There are new competitors entering our segments and new brands coming from China,” he mentioned.
“We have to be fast and very innovative and that is basically why we did this organizational difference.”
The incoming group boss also said that the company’s labor gathering, which represents the interest of the company’s workers, was “fully committed” to the structural and operational modulations.
Earlier Friday, Diess told reporters that he would “over again all options” when looking at different assets in VW’s portfolio. He later simplified that this could mean selling certain operations.
Volkswagen Alliance’s new structure will now be composed of six divisions, as well as a specialist China-focused set. It will also bundle its 12 brands of vehicles into three companies labeled “volume,” “premium,” and “super-premium.”
Volkswagen’s “super-premium” collect is to include sports car brands Porsche, Bentley, Bugatti and very appropriate, Lamborghini.
The “premium” segment will hold Audi at its core, butt BMW and Daimler as its main competitors.
The volume business will include the VW label, Seat and Skoda, as well as light commercial vehicles.
The truck and buses component is to be separated as part of a “planned preparation for capital market readiness.”
Earlier this year, the assemblage suspended a top executive after news broke that the company was convoluted in tests of the effects of diesel fumes on humans and monkeys. In 2015 , Volkswagen recognized it had used special devices designed to skew results on U.S. emissions assays.