#Strategy

The Volkswagen Group is reorganizing its procurement of electronic parts and semiconductors to ensure supply over the long term and, in doing so, securing itself a leading position in terms of technology as well as competitiveness. To this end, the Group has developed a new strategy for the procurement of parts with electronic components.

Today, the Volkswagen Group and its Elli brand became the first automotive company to start trading on the German electricity market of Europe's largest power exchange, EPEX Spot. The basis for electricity trading is a stationary storage system made of e-up! batteries and a new, digital electricity trading platform from Elli. In the future, the stationary storage system – the so-called "PowerCenter" – will store the energy traded on the electricity market. The pilot project is being driven forward jointly by Elli and Volkswagen After Sales and is a first step on the way to the planned Smart Energy Platform. In the future, Volkswagen and Elli want to anchor the growing storage capacities of electric cars and batteries in the energy system and make an important contribution to the energy transition.

Volkswagen Group will continue to drive forward the strategic realignment of the charging and energy business with the new Head of Charging and Energy, Giovanni Palazzo. Palazzo has been responsible for the Volkswagen Group's global charging and energy business since July 1 and also leads the Elli brand as CEO and Head of Sales. He will focus on expanding the fast-charging network and further advancing the development of Volkswagen’s own smart energy platform. Elli and Electrify America are to cooperate more closely and roll out new business models internationally. In addition, the division will strengthen cooperation with the Group brands and intensify its proximity to private and fleet customers. The cornerstones of the strategy have already been presented to investors and analysts at the Capital Markets Day.

As the new CEO of AUDI AG, Gernot Döllner will take his place on Volkswagen AG’s Group Board of Management on 1 September 2023. He will take over from Markus Duesmann, who will resign from Group management at the same time. The Group Supervisory Board adopted a resolution to this effect today.

Volkswagen intends to drive up its performance and profitability in the long term with the “ACCELERATE FORWARD | Road to 6.5” global performance program. The goal is to sustainably achieve a return on sales of 6.5 percent to safeguard investments in future technologies and jobs. To this end, the brand plans to improve earnings by around 10 billion euros in 2026. At today’s works meeting held at the Wolfsburg headquarters, Volkswagen CEO Thomas Schäfer outlined important milestones of the program, such as streamlining and accelerating administrative processes, increasing efficiency in development and production, streamlining the model range, and at the same time reducing the number of equipment variants and further improving product quality. Volkswagen is setting up a Project Management Office (PMO) to develop and manage the program. Stephan Wöllenstein, top manager at VW, will take over its management. The program is to be implemented in close consultation with the employee representatives. All measures should be up and running by October 2023.