YouSaid · the spoken record

Herbert Diess

lines on the record: 75
first: 2022-01-18
most recent: 2022-01-18
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“I think you can learn everything now, and I think this American company that shows that you can do stunning things if you're really committed and you're willing So you can do everything, but what I'm saying is that it's don't expect that you can do this game in one or two or in five years. Now, Tesla is a case where it took 15 years and it took a lot of resources. I don't know, 15 or 20 billion to get to profitability. So don't believe that any of these startups showing one car on a motor show will succeed. Some of them probably we take them very seriously, but I'm quite sure that not all will have the substance and...”
2022-01-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Can CEO Herbert Diess reinvent Volkswagen with EVs and software? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'm convinced that our setup with strong brands, hard shift into software, putting all the resources for software together has a good chance to succeed, has a very good chance to succeed in that race.”
2022-01-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Can CEO Herbert Diess reinvent Volkswagen with EVs and software? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And rebuild new skills and acquire new skills there to be capable. What makes me confident that we can succeed, any other potential competitor has the same problem? I would say even a software company to really understand in the necessities and the complexity of a car, it's a huge task. It is a huge task. And I haven't seen software companies so far succeeding. The big supplier companies have a chance, now I would say the big US American or European suppliers, Bosch Continent, they would have a chance because they own part of the software stack when it comes to braking, steering, but also integration and customer interface is a huge challenge for them. Also the backend cloud backend is a huge challenge for them. So that means”
2022-01-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Can CEO Herbert Diess reinvent Volkswagen with EVs and software? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Even a really big company could do a really good car, software wise and hardware-wise, because it's not so easy to acquire all those capabilities. The problem we are facing today is that these competencies are between suppliers, sub-suppliers, not Bosch, Conte, ourselves, and we need a stronger vertical integration to be competitive. And this is one of our American competitors is probably a little bit ahead of us, but also this American competitor has to learn still some lessons to be trustful and reliable and delivering on all the promises. But we have to, let's say, restructure”
2022-01-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Can CEO Herbert Diess reinvent Volkswagen with EVs and software? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Now, in the different properties. And this is a very difficult task, but it's also something not so easy to copy because it's so complex. A car today already is 10 times more complex than a smartphone. It has 10 times more lines of code than a smartphone. The criteria is extremely different. Now your safety critical, the real-time environments are really difficult if you think braking or steering redundancy. You have to build in redundancies. And then you have to make the whole thing communicate to each other and being updatable means that part of your software runs in the cloud and you get the continuous updates. And the question is, who is going to succeed? Who can do it? And your assumption is that we are basically in a difficult position. And you're partially right. I would say today no real”
2022-01-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Can CEO Herbert Diess reinvent Volkswagen with EVs and software? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It depends how you call it. I would say it is Volkswagen. If you say, no, I think you're absolutely right in your verdict. Differentiation, the competitiveness, also the customer experience will depend 90% on software. Still, I'm convinced that design will play a role, performance will play a role, brand, image, marketing will play a role, but software is becoming really dominant in the integration. But that was always the case. I think also those successful brands always could demonstrate that the integrity of a product is excellent. No, atypical Volkswagen had to be a typical Volkswagen, then this car was a success. And the same applies to BMW Mercedes. So product integrity in a huge open room of solutions always has been a core task. What's really new is that so decisive to be able to integrate software.”
2022-01-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Can CEO Herbert Diess reinvent Volkswagen with EVs and software? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, no, that's not true. We do that also continuously, but you have to imagine we are much more complex. Now we have a variety of supply chains, which makes us, and even the platform strategy makes us a little bit more vulnerable. But we also did some redesigns. Probably we are still a bit too slow, I agree.”
2022-01-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Can CEO Herbert Diess reinvent Volkswagen with EVs and software? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Billion in software now we have acquired a car rental company, or we are in the process just recently, so we are investing heavily in the transition, more than probably others. That means that we came to that conclusion and we could convince our stakeholders quite early. So it's not necessarily that we get slow, but we have to admit that those founder companies say bring different speed to the game it's a new challenge for us and we have to rethink our processes, rethink our organization and we have to improve a lot to remain competitive”
2022-01-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Can CEO Herbert Diess reinvent Volkswagen with EVs and software? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so I think in any business model, you have to explain your story, you have to explain why you have to take the people with you. It's probably more complex in the Volkswagen world where the ownership is quite special, I would call it. Also, let's say it's quite heterogeneous because of several brands. Porsche is totally different to Scola, trucks, Scania is totally different to cars. So it's a complex task, but it's working. And I would say we can demonstrate because we think we are quite fast in the transition. We have taken the decision to go for an electric only electric platform five years ago. Some of our peers are coming to that conclusion now, basically. I think we are continuously investing. We have strong cash flows from our existing business. We are continuously investing. We have invested several.”
2022-01-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Can CEO Herbert Diess reinvent Volkswagen with EVs and software? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It is, but it can work. But I think it's complex now, and you need more alignment, a lot of discussion, and it's not allowing, let's say, very random decisions or so. You have to defend your case. But I think as is a shared interest in the future of the company. Now, also in, let's say, an ideal world where you have to talk to your finance audience or so you have to convince people if you want to run business. It's not that you can decide everything out of the guts because you can make a few decisions, but then you have to prove.”
2022-01-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Can CEO Herbert Diess reinvent Volkswagen with EVs and software? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Life experience tells me that the best knowledge normally is in the room. I'm always looking for different opinions for a variety of insights, for discussion to get to the right decision. I think those sole decisions from the stomach, and I've experienced some of them. Are often wrong. I believe in good team decisions, in fighting for different positions, for different, have, let's say, a competition for the best ideas that really works. And normally you have the competence in the team room.”
2022-01-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Can CEO Herbert Diess reinvent Volkswagen with EVs and software? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I want to talk about that in depth, but I just want to ask two more of what I think of as the decoder questions. You run a huge company, lots of different kinds of decisions to make, especially as you transition. How do you make decisions? What is your decision making framework?”
2022-01-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Can CEO Herbert Diess reinvent Volkswagen with EVs and software? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The cars, the Taikan and the Audi GT are so different in the perception, in the range, also in the segments they are running, that I think the new world will allow for a lot of differentiation, but will even allow for more economies of scale.”
2022-01-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Can CEO Herbert Diess reinvent Volkswagen with EVs and software? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Competitive in software if we do the basic software in common for all the brands. And this is exactly why we found it carried to get from a world where we bought in software, we say embedded systems to an own software stack which will supply the basic software stack to all of our brands and then the brands have all the tools and all the freedom to differentiate for sportiness, for comfort, for different use cases. And this is why we think we are well set up for this new world where economies of scale will probably play a bigger role than in this old outer world. And differentiation will be probably more difficult, but through software it will be very, very possible. We are sharing currently in the upper end 800 volt platform between Audi and Porsche.”
2022-01-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Can CEO Herbert Diess reinvent Volkswagen with EVs and software? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Hardware and software for navigation, for climate control, for even the window lifter would have different software. That's not necessary. And also this trend that software gets separated from the hardware that we get from embedded software, which comes with the computers we buy to, let's say, an own software stack, then also software offers a huge opportunity for economies of scale, still allowing for brand differentiation. A Porsche can remain a Porsche, even better probably than today. An Audi can remain an Audi in Volkswagen will offer a broad range of products. But the basic software stack can be very, very similar. And as software is relatively expensive in automotive, now it's a one-time expenditure is high. We think that we have a good chance also to become very”
2022-01-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Can CEO Herbert Diess reinvent Volkswagen with EVs and software? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We all share kind of chocolate size battery. Now this is. Floor bottom battery allowing for a huge range of the cars. This is a common, you have real electric drives, front wheel electric drives, very similar in its design. We have a certain differentiation currently between 800 volt and 400 volt technology. We have both now Porsche and Audia running on 800 volt Volkswagen and the volume brands on 400 volt. But even we will see a conversion there. And that is why we decided that in the future in an entirely electric world, one platform will do it. And this will be a differentiated platform, not from 85 kilowatts probably to 800 or to 1,000 kilowatts at the top of the range. There are a lot of similarities which we can leverage in scale. Even more so on the software side. Now today, if you would drive an Audi or Porsche and a Volkswagen, you would have probably different”
2022-01-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Can CEO Herbert Diess reinvent Volkswagen with EVs and software? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“First of all, I might say that we have been quite successful. Now, because our platforms are really widely used. Best platform technology at really best price, and this is why we are today with the goal, for instance, we are basically winning every test comparison, and we share this platform with Audi. So it works. We have quite good experience with maybe even now we get to the next stage. The world is changing. We are going to an electric automotive world nowhere you would have less differentiation when it comes to engines. You still will have differentiation performance-wise. Now you will have a rear-wheel drive, front wheel drive, all-wheel drive, you will have different sizes of batteries. But when it comes then to the converters for the electric units or so, you get to much more similarity than we have today in the industry. And this is why we think hardware differentiation will be probably less in the future. Because what we also see from the competition”
2022-01-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Can CEO Herbert Diess reinvent Volkswagen with EVs and software? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I feel like I hear a lot from car COs on the show the same idea, which is we have a house of brands. We want all the brands to be differentiated and operate in whatever segments, whether it's volume or premium or sports cars. You also own Lamborghini. I could just talk to you about Lamborghini for an hour. But we're going to get economy of scale from centralizing platforms, software, all of that stuff. Right. We're going to have just a few basic platforms and those platforms are going to be expressed by our brands in various ways. That idea sounds great. The execution of that idea is obviously very hard. So if Volkswagen has a different need for the platform underlying the ID4 than Audi, how do you make that decision?”
2022-01-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Can CEO Herbert Diess reinvent Volkswagen with EVs and software? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The group, we have quite independent groups of brands, so it's volume is led by Volkswagen, all premium brands are led by Audi, and Porsche is basically on its own and towards the customer side, they are very, very independent, but we share technology. We share platforms, we share hardware platform, we share software platform, we share mobility services, we share finance. And that is how we capitalize on the economies of scale.”
2022-01-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Can CEO Herbert Diess reinvent Volkswagen with EVs and software? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“First of all, we are kind of a conglomerate of brands. Volkswagen is from Scota, SEAT, Volkswagen as a worldwide brand in the volume manufacturing segment. But then we have also premium, Audi, first and foremost, but also Bentley, Lamborghini are belonging to Volkswagen. And I would say top of the range, most Borti cars Porsches belong to the brand. Then we have trucks, Scania, MIN, so totally different business, but also about mobility. It's about transport. And then we have a couple of service entities. We just in the process of acquiring a car rental company, a car sharing. So it's, as you said, it's quite big. It's complex. But I think it's a good setup for being successful in the future. We have scale, we have technology, we have exciting brands. So how we are going to run”
2022-01-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Can CEO Herbert Diess reinvent Volkswagen with EVs and software? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, there's a lot to talk about. VW just announced the micro bus is coming back as an EV. I saw some photos coming out of CS. They look very exciting. That's obviously a legendary car. I think people are excited about it. But then VW itself has just restructured a bit. You just took over leadership of the software group called Kariad, which is fascinating. So I actually want to start there with the basics. VW is a massive major car company lots of businesses lots of markets that you serve. It's an old company. It's been around for a long time. How is VW structured?”
2022-01-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Can CEO Herbert Diess reinvent Volkswagen with EVs and software? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Thank you. I'm excited to be first time with you, Nile. Thank you for the opportunity and look forward to your questions.”
2022-01-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Can CEO Herbert Diess reinvent Volkswagen with EVs and software? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Advantage as the country transitions to EVs. But it's got to get it right. And it certainly can't think of running Electrify America as a punishment. Herbert and I talked about all fat and the overall transition to EVs, including VW's new EV microbus, which is very cool. We also talked about how a company like Volkswagen can move as quickly as its smaller competitors, whether or not Volkswagen will let other companies buy or license the software it's developing for its own cars, how he's thinking about self-driving cars in just a ton more. If you listen, you'll notice that there's a real theme here. It's a vertical integration. Herbert thinks that in order for Volkswagen Group to move fast and invent the future, it has to do a lot of things itself instead of depending on suppliers. It comes up over and over again. Okay, Herbert Deese, the CEO of Volkswagen Group. Here we go.”
2022-01-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Can CEO Herbert Diess reinvent Volkswagen with EVs and software? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's also complicated. Herbert oversees a huge range of familiar car brands. There's a few W, of course, but also Audi, Lamborghini, Porsche, Bentley, Rosoda, and C in Europe. They own the Ducati motorcycle company. A recent management shuffle also put him directly in charge of Volkswagen's software subsidiary, which is called Karyad. And of course, he's in charge of VW's aggressive efforts to electrify its lineup and shift all of its cars to being EVs. And you can't talk about that process without talking about a scandal. From 2009 to 2015, Volkswagen sold cars with diesel engines that were programmed to circumvent emissions tests. The cars would know when they were stationary and being tested and reduced emissions to pass the tests, but moving around under normal driving conditions, they emitted 40 times more nitrogen oxide than was allowed.”
2022-01-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Can CEO Herbert Diess reinvent Volkswagen with EVs and software? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Hello and welcome to Decoder. I'm Neil I Patel, editor-in-chief of the Verge, and Decoder is my show about big ideas, other problems. Today, I'm talking to Volkswagen Group CEO, Dr. Herbert Dies. Now, Volkswagen Group is a huge company. Here in the United States, you might not know it because Volkswagen has smaller market share here, but Volkswagen is one of the two biggest car makers in the world. There's a battle every year between VW and Toyota for the top spot. They both sell around 10 million cars a year. To put that in perspective, Ford sells around 4 to 6 million cars a year. And in 2021, Tesla sold just over 900,000 cars. So, yeah, Volkswagen Group is big.”
2022-01-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Can CEO Herbert Diess reinvent Volkswagen with EVs and software? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT