Blume tinkers with Diess legacy
The new CEO of the Volkswagen Group, Oliver Blume, is pulling the broom through the plans set out by predecessor Herbert Diess. It would mean, among other things, that the prestigious Artemis project would be put aside.
The Volkswagen Group, led by Herbert Diess, took a more progressive and ambitious path. Diess was fully committed to the development of electric models, new software and autonomous driving. In practice, the group was regularly unable to keep up with Diess’s speed. The Volkswagen ID3 had a difficult birth due to software problems and software branch Cariad did not make the progress that was foreseen. The latter reportedly cost Diess his job. Diess also spurred the development of autonomous driving, which also seems to have been a bit too ambitious. Diess’ successor Oliver Blume will put things in order, the news agency suspects Reuters based on insider sources.
Blume is reported to reveal on December 15 what will change in the future strategy of the Volkswagen Group, reports Handelsblatt, but some details are already coming out. Earlier it appeared that the introduction of the fully electric Porsche Macan on the PPE platform will be postponed until 2024. Blume explains this step in more detail. It is also expected that the PPE platform will be introduced sometime in 2023. The cousin of the electric Macan, the Audi Q6 e-tron, may come next year.
A bigger change is that the Artemis project is going to be trashed. Initially, an electric top model was to emerge from this in 2026, the cream of the crop in the field of software and autonomous driving. Audi is the driving force behind the project and Bentley and initially Porsche would also benefit from it. Porsche got out earlier, but now the whole party would not go on. There would be too little progress within the Artemis project and that is why there is now a plan to develop the top models of Audi (new ‘A8’) and Porsche (new Panamera) on a new basis developed by Porsche. This is then logically a more conventional platform with less far-reaching autonomous options than was foreseen under Artemis. We haven’t heard anything yet about Bentley, which, as mentioned, was also involved with Artemis. We should have more clarity on December 15.
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