Volkswagen Board Ousts CEO Herbert Diess After Pivot to Electric Vehicles(wsj.com)
wsj.com
Volkswagen Board Ousts CEO Herbert Diess After Pivot to Electric Vehicles
https://www.wsj.com/articles/volkswagen-ceo-herbert-diess-is-stepping-down-11658507894
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The article title implies that it's because of the business decision to pivot to EV's, that feels like an oversimplification of his legacy. I thought this was an excellent piece: https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/herbert-diess-volkswagens-...
The interesting thing that jumps out to me in that piece is:
> In the United States, Diess could be remembered as the executive who brought back the beloved VW microbus as a stylish EV, and revived the Scout truck brand. But Diess irritated U.S. Volkswagen dealers with talk about selling Scouts directly to consumers.
Shareholders generally don't care about labor issues (some of them love it when unions are angry), and shareholders probably don't really know/care about software issues (other than related quarterly timeline slippages), this almost buried factoid about Scout to me almost sounds the like the most obvious reason for this shareholder-lead coup. There's probably still plenty of dealer representation among shareholders. That very public hint that Scouts could possible be sold direct to consumer was released so recently that it doesn't seem likely to be coincidence.
> In the United States, Diess could be remembered as the executive who brought back the beloved VW microbus as a stylish EV, and revived the Scout truck brand. But Diess irritated U.S. Volkswagen dealers with talk about selling Scouts directly to consumers.
Shareholders generally don't care about labor issues (some of them love it when unions are angry), and shareholders probably don't really know/care about software issues (other than related quarterly timeline slippages), this almost buried factoid about Scout to me almost sounds the like the most obvious reason for this shareholder-lead coup. There's probably still plenty of dealer representation among shareholders. That very public hint that Scouts could possible be sold direct to consumer was released so recently that it doesn't seem likely to be coincidence.
> But members of the Porsche and Piech families, major shareholders, were concerned that Diess was not delivering results fast enough from his multi-billion euro investments in EVs and software development.
This feels shortsighted. The one thing I will credit Tesla with is recognition that software is key to the future of the automobile. Traditional car manufacturers really do not get this (or did not, prior to Tesla). They were all was outsourcing their software. Diess did seem to understand this.
Maybe just getting VW pointed in the right direction is enough. But if they start outsourcing the system software again, they're in deep shit long term.
This feels shortsighted. The one thing I will credit Tesla with is recognition that software is key to the future of the automobile. Traditional car manufacturers really do not get this (or did not, prior to Tesla). They were all was outsourcing their software. Diess did seem to understand this.
Maybe just getting VW pointed in the right direction is enough. But if they start outsourcing the system software again, they're in deep shit long term.
[deleted]
3 days ago it was announced that Scott Keogh, president and CEO of Volkswagen Group of America is leaving the CEO role to become president and CEO of Scout on Sept. 1.
Volkswagen is bringing back Scout truck as an electric vehicle, to be made in America. Scout is a VW brand, but it will be established as an independent company.
Previous discussion on the news (that I submitted to HN 3 days ago): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32153222
Volkswagen is bringing back Scout truck as an electric vehicle, to be made in America. Scout is a VW brand, but it will be established as an independent company.
Previous discussion on the news (that I submitted to HN 3 days ago): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32153222
[deleted]
Diess's vision has given VW a great future in EV. I hope they throw solar panels on utility trucks.
The article hints at 'software production problems', bad relations with the union leaders, and the family with controlling interest being courted by apple/google/microsoft to fix their problems.
I really really hope VW keeps apple/google/microsoft out of their software strategy.
The article hints at 'software production problems', bad relations with the union leaders, and the family with controlling interest being courted by apple/google/microsoft to fix their problems.
I really really hope VW keeps apple/google/microsoft out of their software strategy.
>I really really hope VW keeps apple/google/microsoft out of their software strategy.
Did you by any chance had the "pleasure" of interacting with ID.4? Its infotainment is utter broken garbage, someone actually signed off on shipping it like that :o
Did you by any chance had the "pleasure" of interacting with ID.4? Its infotainment is utter broken garbage, someone actually signed off on shipping it like that :o
I cant say that I have, no.
https://www.thedrive.com/new-cars/43809/2021-volkswagen-id-4...
>I couldn't turn the heater on countless times because the climate portion of the OS was unresponsive. Other times, it would simply say that the function couldn't be performed at the time.
>user interface was also absolutely horrific. It was glitchy, slow, and organized in a way that made zero sense. During a two-hour trip, I was not able to turn off the heated steering wheel function, which had gotten stuck on its highest setting. It got so painfully hot that I had to resort to just using my fingertips to hold the wheel. Power-cycling the car wouldn't do anything, either. Eventually, it just turned off by itself for no apparent reason.
>headlights—despite being on Auto mode—sometimes would stay on after I had exited the car, making me come out of my house minutes later to manually turn them off
>driver only has two switches to control all four windows. That's right, you must select the "Rear" setting and then use the two available switches to operate the rear windows. Want to roll down your own window? De-select Rear to be able to do that.
>After spending nearly two weeks attempting to learn the system, I realized my efforts didn't matter because the damn thing was so unpredictable and flawed that I just never felt confident that I had control over it.
You might think its been a year surely its fixed, well https://www.vwidtalk.com/threads/is-infotainment-that-bad.47...
>>OK, I'm puzzled now. Are you guys saying that you have to wait for the car to boot before it's driveable?
>No, but the likelihood that you get some random error is greatly diminished. I almost always unplug, sit down, flip it in reverse and go and almost never have any issue.
its not undriveable if you just start it without waiting over a minute, it just randomly glitches!
What glitches? like this https://www.vwidtalk.com/threads/id4-infotainment-inverted-a... https://www.vwidtalk.com/threads/blank-screens.1546/
If you search id4 on youtube videos like "Improve Infotainment Screen Lag with these 2 things!" and "How to fix a Blank Infotainment Screen on the VW ID.4" are at the top.
WV has been selling car this broken for a year now (11 months).
>I couldn't turn the heater on countless times because the climate portion of the OS was unresponsive. Other times, it would simply say that the function couldn't be performed at the time.
>user interface was also absolutely horrific. It was glitchy, slow, and organized in a way that made zero sense. During a two-hour trip, I was not able to turn off the heated steering wheel function, which had gotten stuck on its highest setting. It got so painfully hot that I had to resort to just using my fingertips to hold the wheel. Power-cycling the car wouldn't do anything, either. Eventually, it just turned off by itself for no apparent reason.
>headlights—despite being on Auto mode—sometimes would stay on after I had exited the car, making me come out of my house minutes later to manually turn them off
>driver only has two switches to control all four windows. That's right, you must select the "Rear" setting and then use the two available switches to operate the rear windows. Want to roll down your own window? De-select Rear to be able to do that.
>After spending nearly two weeks attempting to learn the system, I realized my efforts didn't matter because the damn thing was so unpredictable and flawed that I just never felt confident that I had control over it.
You might think its been a year surely its fixed, well https://www.vwidtalk.com/threads/is-infotainment-that-bad.47...
>>OK, I'm puzzled now. Are you guys saying that you have to wait for the car to boot before it's driveable?
>No, but the likelihood that you get some random error is greatly diminished. I almost always unplug, sit down, flip it in reverse and go and almost never have any issue.
its not undriveable if you just start it without waiting over a minute, it just randomly glitches!
What glitches? like this https://www.vwidtalk.com/threads/id4-infotainment-inverted-a... https://www.vwidtalk.com/threads/blank-screens.1546/
If you search id4 on youtube videos like "Improve Infotainment Screen Lag with these 2 things!" and "How to fix a Blank Infotainment Screen on the VW ID.4" are at the top.
WV has been selling car this broken for a year now (11 months).