The Volkswagen Group wants to improve the quality of new cars. That is why it creates a top function that must supervise this. Head of product development Frank Welsch is the man who takes on the role. His successor is Thomas Ulbrich, which is somewhat striking.
In the past year, the Volkswagen Group has succeeded in bringing numerous electric cars to the market in a short period of time, but not all of them are free from teething problems. There were concerns especially around the Volkswagen ID3. There was also, among other things, a temporary delivery stop for the Golf and the Skoda Octavia due to software problems. Certainly not a flawless year for the company and Wolfsburg wants to end that. That is why VW is setting up a new top function to guarantee quality control within the group. Frank Welsch (photo), currently head of product development at the Volkswagen brand, will be responsible for this.
Naturally, Welsch must be followed up at Volkswagen and the Thomas Ulbrich brand has chosen for that. So he gets the reins when it comes to product development at VW. Ulbrich’s appointment is striking. At the end of last year it came out that Ulbrich would leave Volkswagen. As chief of e-mobility at Volkswagen, he was responsible for the ID3 and ID4, among other things, and although he would officially step down ‘for personal reasons after an intensely busy period’, there were rumors that his departure was a reaction to the aforementioned problems. Ulbrich would have been offered a different position, but would have seen it as demotion and thanked him kindly.
Thomas Ulbrich
Now, however, Ulbrich has returned (never) left and he will be given a higher position. The fact that he will be generally responsible for the product development of the Volkswagen brand seems rather a signal that Ulbrich has proved to be the right man to lead the brand into the next chapter due to his experience with the development of EVs.