BEIJING, April 25 (TMTPOST)— Volkswagen Group CEO Herbert Diess gave a new concept for the automobile giant’s competitors.

Volkswagen has treated not just traditional automakers such as Stellantis and Hyundai, but also Tesla and its Chinese electric vehicle (EV) companies including BYD, NIO and Xpeng, one of PowerPoint slides in the internal discussion shared by Diess through his account of Twitter-like Chinese social media Sina Weibo.

Source: Herbert Diess

At a recent meeting in Berlin as the first anniversary of Volkswagen’s NEW AUTO strategy passes, the new board of directors agreed that a new organization structure is critical when as we are evolving from a classic OEM to a vertically integrated mobility company, and during the transformation to NEW AUTO, our competitors are no longer called Mercedes-Benz AG, Toyota Motor Corporation or Stellantis, but Tesla, Foxconn, Apple, LG Electronics, Uber etc., Diess said in the posts both in Chinese on Weibo and in English on LinkedIn.

According to Diess, the board concluded they need add efforts from the group-level if we want to foster growth in various regions, such as in the market of China, where Ralf Brandstätter as new board member would make sure that the group takes a cross-brand, cross-platform approach. It also needs to be the case in the United States, where the group aims to raise its overall market share to 10%. Diess vowed that his company would launch an ambitious growth plan given the latest geopolitical changes and increased block-building of international trade and economy that have been exposing its global vulnerability, particularly with regards to the U.S.

Diess also noted that to boost the business in China is one of the three consensuses the board reached on key drivers and the most urgent issues prior to the discussion. The other two are to make the group’s automotive software unit CARIAD thrive and to establish a new steering model for the group.

Diess didn’s specify what resulted in Volkswagen’s vulnerability. However, the global auto industry has been suffering from effects of global conflicts, especially supply chain woes and and rising prices in the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic.

A number of automakers in China had to shut down their factories since March, when Shanghai and Jilin, two automobile manufacturing hubs, reported the upward trend of Covid cases. In March alone, outputs of FAW Car Company’s luxury car Hongqi slumped 73% from a year ago, while FAW-Volkswagen, SAIC-GM, and Beijing Benz saw the year-over-year decline of 45.8%, 31.3% and30.7% in their production respectively, according to China Passenger Car Association (CPCA). Volkswagen Group China said its Shanghai factories began to gradually resume production on Monday, ending a temporary suspension since March 31.

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