Shake-up at Volkswagen at Ralf Brandstätter takes over as division boss

Volkswagen Chairman and Group CEO, Herbert Diess, has been relieved of his duties as head of the Wolfsburg marque’s passenger vehicle division in order to focus more on the wider aspects of the company.

In a statement, Volkswagen announced that Diess, who had been occupying the position since replacing Matthias Müller in 2018, will be succeeded by former Chief Operating Officer Ralf Brandstätter from the first of next month so as to provide him with a “greater leeway for his tasks as Group CEO”. The automaker however stated that Diess would continue to have overall responsibility for the passenger division and volume brands.

“Ralf Brandstätter is one of the company’s most experienced managers. Over the past two years, he has already led Volkswagen successfully as COO and played a key role in shaping the transformation of the brand,” Diess said of his successor who joined Volkswagen in 1993 after studying to become an industrial engineer.

“I am therefore very pleased that Ralf Brandstätter will be forging ahead with the development of the brand as CEO following the far-reaching strategic decisions of the past few years.”

Of his new role, Brandstätter, who joined the Volkswagen Board in 1998 as assistant general secretariat before being made New Vehicle Project Manager in 2003 and then occupying various positions within Seat from 2005 to 2015 before being made COO in 2018, three years after being elected to the Board, said the key focus would be on the automaker’s Transform 2025+ initiative aimed at selling “at least” 1.5-million electric vehicles by said year.

“On the basis of the Transform 2025+ strategy, the brand is developing into one of the leading providers of carbon-neutral mobility and is on the way to becoming a digital technology company. I would like to thank the entire Volkswagen team for their tremendous commitment. We will follow our path resolutely together,” Brandstätter said.

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